Olympic athletics predictions and betting tips: Thompson-Herah to strike gold

Free athletics tips, best bets and analysis at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

Where to watch

BBC & Eurosport, from 1am Friday

Best bets

Elaine Thompson-Herah to win women's 100m
2pts 12-5 bet365

Jacob Kiplimo to win men's 10,000m
2pts 16-5 Paddy Power

Fred Kerley to win men's 100m
1pt 16-1 bet365

Kendra Harrison to win women's 100m hurdles
2pts 6-4 bet365, Paddy Power

Preview

Few sports at the Olympics encapsulate the Olympic motto of Faster, Higher, Stronger better than athletics.

The track and field events are for many the highlight of the Olympics, creating some of the most enduring memories of the Games from Jesse Owens' four-gold haul in Berlin 1936, Ben Johnson's infamous 100m disqualification in 1988, Cathy Freeman's date with destiny in Sydney in 2000, right through to Great Britain's Super Saturday in London nine years ago.

New legends will be made over the next ten days in Tokyo as the first athletics competitors descend on the newly constructed Olympic Stadium in the early hours of Friday morning.

Women's 100m preview

The heats for the women's 100m gets the athletics event at Tokyo 2020 started on a packed opening weekend of competition.

The preliminary rounds start at 1am on Friday UK and Ireland time, with the first round scheduled to begin at 4am.

That is the point when Great Britain's golden girl Dina Asher-Smith enters the fray as she bids to become only the third British woman to claim an Olympic 100m medal after Dorothy Manley in 1948 and Dorothy Hyman in 1960.

Asher-Smith is 9-2 to strike gold as she targets the sprint double in Tokyo, although there is a familiar name at the head of the betting.

Champion in Beijing and London, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce is the matriarch of the global sprinting scene these days at 34 years of age but the veteran Jamaican shows no signs of slowing down. Indeed, she is getting quicker.

Fraser-Pryce clocked 10.63, the second fastest 100m in history, in her homeland on June 5 and is odds-on to regain the title she lost in Rio to compatriot Elaine Thompson-Herah.

Thompson-Herah won both the 100 and 200m in Rio and showcased her wellbeing by beating an exceptionally strong field, including Fraser-Pryce, in Szekesfehervar, Hungary, a little over three weeks ago in a time of 10.71 - just one-hundredth of a second outside her lifetime best.

With Asher-Smith, Ivory Coast's Marie-Josee Ta Lou and a third Jamaican, Shericka Jackson, also in the mix, the women's 100m in Tokyo could be a race for the ages but at the prices it is the 29-year-old defending champion who looks the best bet to come out on top.

Men's 10,000m final preview

There are no early rounds to negotiate in the 10,000m and there is also no Mo Farah this time around after the two-time reigning champion failed to qualify.

The betting suggests that the battle to be the first gold medallist on the track will be between Ethiopian duo Yomif Kejelcha and Selemon Barega and the Ugandan pairing of Jacob Kiplimo and world-record holder Joshua Cheptegei.

Cheptegei has risen to the top of distance running since finishing outside of the medals in Rio, breaking the 5,000 and 10,000m world records last year.

However, he hasn't raced much in the lead-up to Tokyo, unlike new kid on the block Kiplimo, who clocked a world-leading time of 26:33.93 in May - the seventh-fastest time in history.

Kiplimo was also crowned world half-marathon champion in October last year, beating Cheptegei into fourth place, and in a race which could turn into a tactical affair, that added speed endurance may prove a major benefit.

Men's 100m preview

The battle to become the fastest man on the planet begins in the early hours of Saturday morning.

The retirement of Usain Bolt has left the 100m division of men's sprinting shorn of a real superstar, especially given 200m world champion Noah Lyles failed to qualify for the shorter event in Tokyo.

The American trials may be the best piece of form to go on, with all three qualifiers stopping the clock under 9.86 seconds.

Trayvon Bromell won the US trials in a time of 9.80, with Ronnie Baker second in 9.85 and Fred Kerley taking bronze in 9.86.

That is the same order in which bookmakers have priced up the American trio and given Kerley is 16-1 and Bromell even money to win gold, the former has to be the better betting proposition.

Kerley, who was third in the 400m at the last worlds in 2019, has serious untapped potential in the 100m and has consistently lowered his PB in the event as the season has progressed, culminating in his run at the US trials, giving the impression there could be more improvement to come.

Women's 400m hurdles preview

There have been some exceptional sporting rivalries down the years - think Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer or Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal - and there is another waiting to be decided in the women's 400m hurdles.

US star Dalilah Muhammad is the reigning Olympic and world champion but her compatriot and fierce rival Sydney McLaughlin, with whom she had an epic battle with at the 2019 Worlds in Doha, has laid down the gauntlet in no uncertain terms this year.

'Syd the Kid' became the youngest US track athlete in history at 16 years of age in Rio and five years on she is now the fastest woman in ever in the event having broken the 52-seconds barrier in June's US trials.

She beat Muhammad by over half a second that day and looks primed to confirm odds-on favouritism to become Olympic champion.

Women's 100m hurdles preview

There could be another battle royal in the women's high hurdles as Jasmine Camacho-Quinn bids to become only Puerto Rico's second Olympic gold medallist.

Her main opposition is likely to come from world-record holder Kendra Harrison, who won a typically competitive US trials.

Harrison has lost a race this year only when she has hit a hurdle or failed to finish so should be confident of triumphing if she is foot-perfect over her barriers in Tokyo.

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