BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — It's supposed to be a track meet featuring the best of the best. When Saturday night's sprints roll around at the Ultimate Championship, one thing will be missing: the fastest of the fast.
The fastest man and woman in the 100 meters this year — Olympic titlist Noah Lyles (9.79 seconds) and burgeoning University of Georgia star Adaejah Hodge (10.63) — will both be absent from the track meet offering $150,000 top prizes.
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It's part of the reality of track: Even when it tries its hardest to bring the best together, a sport with thousands of athletes — all independent contractors on different schedules and always at the risk of injury — will miss a few here and there.
In Lyles' case, it was a matter of a leg injury that came up at the U.S. championships in July and never fully healed that's keeping him away.
“I was very reluctant and I was saying ‘No, no, no, we can push through this,’” Lyles said. “But in reality, I had to come to my senses and say ‘No, I can’t keep pushing through this, or it's just going to get worse.'”
Lyles wanted to race in Budapest — and, in fact, he's here anyway, serving as an emcee and party planner for an event that's supposed to cater to the athletes.
But this event was never part of Hodge's plans.
She built her schedule around NCAA indoor and outdoor championships, where she won the 200 meters in both and also shattered Sha'Carri Richardson's seven-year-old college record of 10.75 seconds in the 100 meters in a preliminary heat before falling in the final.
Last month, Hodge, who competes internationally for the British Virgin Islands, won gold in the 200 at the Commonwealth Games, which is where she'd always planned to end her season. Not even a chance at the $150,000 first prize could change the schedule.
“We targeted that in training, got that done, stuck to our guns,” said Hodge's coach at Georgia, Caryl Smith Gilbert. “We said ‘Let’s rest.' There are three long years ahead. We've got worlds, Olympics, worlds.”
For decades, track moved to that rhythm — an Olympic year sandwiched between years featuring world championships — and left the middle year between Olympic Games free of major international events.
The Ultimate Championship seeks to change that, banking that a $10 million prize pool will be enough to lure the top 16 athletes in selected events to a season-ending meeting that looks completely different from most in track.
The sport mostly got takers for the first edition of this format. For instance, Josh Kerr, who jettisoned 1,500-meter races this year to focus on the slightly longer mile, where he broke a 27-year-old world record, accepted a special invitation for the 1,500 at Ultimate.
“I think it's a really interesting opportunity for the athletes,” Kerr said. “To be able to go out there and race again against a world-class field is something I always want to do. I'm going to show up at my best. It's kept me going for an extra six weeks and I'm pretty excited about it."
Not everyone, however, was willing to change plans.
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, the most consistently excellent athlete in the entire sport, took 2026 off to have a baby. Her daughter, Savannah, was born July 12.
Beatrice Chebet, the Olympic and world champion at 5,000 meters, also had a baby in June.
With Faith Kipyegon shutting down her season due to injury last month, Ultimate is missing the 1-2 finishers in the 5,000 (Chebet-Kipyegon) and the champion in the 1,500 meters (Kipyegon) from the last Olympics and worlds. There isn't a single Kenyan in the women's 5,000-meter race.
Finally, there is the case of Tara Davis-Woodhall, the reigning Olympic and world champion long jumper who suffered a concussion after getting hit head-on while driving in a parking lot on her way to training last month. She returned to training but earlier this week decided she had to shut down her season.
Davis-Woodhall, one of the more vibrant personalities in the sport, was supposed to be a lead content creator for Ultimate Championship.
“This one hurts,” she said in a social media post announcing she would not make the trip to Budapest. “I’m sad, disappointed and just hurt by all of it. I know this has to be part of my story.”
While most of the athletes missing this week are known quantities, Hodge is still something of a mystery to all but true track junkies.
Two years ago, she was quietly suspended for 17 months by the Athletics Integrity Unit after testing positive for a banned substance called Cardarine. That and other positive tests from athletes in her training group at the time in Florida triggered an investigation into the coach of that group.
All parties in Hodge's case acknowledged she unintentionally ingested the substance. Her ban was reduced by seven months after she provided assistance to AIU in investigating the case.
Of the 10.63 Hodge ran in June in Eugene, Oregon, her coach, Smith Gilbert, said: “Part of me says she wasn't even close to that sort of time, part of me says it's what I thought she could do and part of me thinks this is completely amazing.”
“She's an amazing kid, a great person, a wonderful human being,” Smith Gilbert said. “You’re lucky enough to get kids like that maybe once or twice in your coaching career."
Hodge's time is .07 faster than the second-best marks of the season, posted by Olympic champion Julien Alfred and world champion Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, both of whom are racing Saturday.
Smith Gilbert said to expect Hodge to be in that mix starting in 2027.
“She's going to be one of the best ever,” the coach said.
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