Jeremiah Azu wants a great British summer of sprinting to begin with diamonds in Botswana. The 2025 60m world champion has big plans for success on home soil this year ahead of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, before Birmingham hosts the European Athletics Championships, the first time it has been held on UK soil.
The 24-year-old is hoping to build on a strong indoor season that saw him narrowly miss out on defending his world 60m crown, as he set a new PB of 6.45s to become the second-fastest Brit of all-time over the distance. The Welshman now turns his attention to the 100m, beginning with the World Athletics Relays Championships in Botswana this weekend, where diamond-encrusted medals are up for grabs.
It is also a chance to start the outdoor season strongly and lay down a marker for the rest of the world also in attendance in Gaborone, with the Novuna Great Britain & Northern Ireland team looking to make amends after failing to finish at the same event last year and September's World Championships in Tokyo.
“We've seen the track that we're going to be running on,” said Azu. “They've had some races there, and there's been some great times. We're going into it excited but ultimately, as British sprinters, we always want to leave with a piece of hardware.”
At last year’s championships in Guangzhou, China, British hopes were dashed when Eugene Amo-Dadzie hared off prematurely on the anchor leg, but this year, a team containing Zharnel Hughes and Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake will be hoping to right that wrong ahead of a summer full of medal opportunities. Azu was part of the team that won European 4x100m gold in Munich four years ago and wants to relive that feeling in front of a home crowd in Birmingham.
“I think that failure or that feeling of underachieving or underperforming last year is going to set us up for the next cycle,” he said. “It's going to be sick to have the Europeans in the UK for the first time. I think Birmingham is like two hours away from every major city, which is perfect.”
