World champion Anna Hall aims for her first world indoor medal 
She faces two athletes from the 2025 world indoor and outdoor podiums – Kate O’Connor and Taliyah Brooks
Paulina Ligarska and Adrianna Sułek-Schubert compete for the host nation

Anna Hall may have won medals of every colour at the World Athletics Championships, but her collection is still missing indoor medals. That could change at the World Athletics Indoor Championships Kujawy Pomorze 26, where she will be one of the biggest stars of the US team, going for gold in the pentathlon.

The competition in Poland will mark the 24-year-old’s debut at the World Indoor Championships. She was ruled out of the 2024 contest in Glasgow due to knee surgery and she was also absent from last year’s competition in Nanjing. 

Her PB of 5004, set in 2023, is the North American record and it places her fourth on the world all-time list.

This season she leads the world top list with the score of 4831 she achieved to win the US title in February. That’s the only pentathlon she has contested so far this season and it is in Toruń where she will have her first opportunity to face foreign rivals.

For many of the other leading athletes, this will be their first indoor competition of the year. This group includes two world indoor medallists from last year – Ireland’s silver medallist Kate O’Connor and USA’s bronze medallist Taliyah Brooks.

Both athletes also joined Hall on the podium at the World Championships in Tokyo, O’Connor again securing silver and Brooks joint bronze in the heptathlon.

O’Connor, who set a national record of 4781 when getting bronze at last year’s European Indoor Championships, has competed in the long jump and 60m hurdles this year, winning national indoor medals in both. Brooks, whose PB stands at 4669 from Nanjing, has also contested a couple of individual events so far this year, testing herself in the shot put and long jump.

The host nation has two contenders in Adrianna Sułek-Schubert and Paulina Ligarska. The latter’s chances are boosted not only by her recent PB of 4705 that puts her second to Hall on the world top list, but also by her excellent knowledge of the Kujawsko-Pomorska Arena.

Ligarska improved her personal best there twice in the space of seven days in February. First, she won at the Copernicus Cup (4676), and a week later she was crowned Polish champion for the fifth time in her career.

“I think I need to be brave and not be afraid to say that I want to compete for a medal,” she said in an interview for Polish Television (TVP). “I’m setting personal bests at the age of 29, and I feel like an athlete who still has something to achieve.”

Ligarska narrowly beat Britain’s Abigail Pawlett (4675) in the Copernicus Cup. The podium there was completed by Sułek-Schubert (4667), who will return to the World Indoor Championships for the first time since 2022, when she won silver in Belgrade. Hungary’s Szabina Szűcs (4571), who finished fourth at the Copernicus Cup, has also been performing well this winter.

While O’Connor and Brooks return, the podium from last year’s event in Nanjing will not be repeated as the winner Saga Vanninen has decided to focus on the outdoor season following an intense year.

Before her win, Vanninen secured world indoor silver in 2024, and the entry list for Kujawy Pomorze also features the bronze medallist from Glasgow, Sofie Dokter of the Netherlands, as she makes her first pentathlon appearance of the season.

Piotrek Przyborowski for World Athletics

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