An action packed three months culminated in a spectacular World Indoor Championships which saw three world records

As we’re on the cusp of the outdoor season we thought we’d look back on this year’s indoor season which saw thousands of athletes compete over the World Indoor Tour and then at the World Indoor Championships in Belgrade.

There were a total of 33 World Indoor Tour events, seven of which were Gold: Millrose Games, INIT Indoor Meeting Karlsruhe, New Balance Indoor Grand Prix, Meeting Hauts-de-France Pas-de-Calais, Müller Indoor Grand Prix Birmingham, Orlen Copernicus Cup and World Indoor Tour Madrid 2022.

The year kicked off with the BoXX United Manchester World Indoor Tour silver event on January 22, before the tour finished off with the Belgrade Indoor Meeting silver event on March 7.

My top five moments include two world records, a two-decade long landmark, British history in Boston and Ukrainian inspiration in Belgrade.

The fact that Jakob Ingebrigtsen’s world indoor 1500m record of 3:30.60, Grant Holloways’ joint world 60m hurdles record of 7.29 or Keely Hodgkinson’s British 800m indoor record of 1:57.20 didn’t make the list just emphasises the quality of athleticism over the last three months.

That’s even before you get to Ivana Vuleta claiming long jump gold in front of her home fans, Ryan Crouser suffering his first shot put loss in 32 outings or Mondo Duplantis setting up his own pole vault gala in Uppsala.

These are my top five moments…

Mondo Duplantis reaches new heights 

The gap between Mondo Duplantis’ world record of 6.18m, set in Glasgow back in 2018, to the moment he cleared 6.19m was 751 days. It took just 13 days for him to go higher, still.

Both were set in Belgrade, were achieved on the third attempt and weren’t in the slightest surprising.

For weeks Duplantis threatened to clear 6.19m but every time the bar agonisingly fell. At ISTAF Indoor Berlin on February 4, the organisers actually set the pyro off because they thought that Duplantis had broken the world record. Unfortunately, he knocked the bar on the way down and he would have to wait.

That lasted less than a month. On March 7 at the Belgrade Indoor Meeting – the precursor to the World Indoor Championships – the 22-year-old Swede cleared 6.19m, a height that had bugged him for four years.

If you're waking up this morning and wondering if Mondo Duplantis did really break the world record ??

He really did.

? @AthleticsImages pic.twitter.com/bR8NXbkeOw

— AW (@AthleticsWeekly) March 21, 2022

Two weeks later in the same city he went one better and cleared 6.20m. Duplantis had already won gold and as with most of these events the Olympic pole vault champion was left on his own, as the crowd anticipated more history in the Serbian capital.

The fact that he didn’t even get close on the first two attempts just summed up the self-belief that Duplantis holds in himself.

Only 14 men have cleared 6.00m indoors and the Swede has now recorded heights of 6.17m, 6.18m, 6.19m and 6.20m.

Josh Kerr breaks 32-year-old British record

Nobody had bettered Peter Elliott’s British indoor mile record of 3:52.02 for 32 years. That was until Josh Kerr not just beat but annihilated it with an astonishing 3:48.87 in Boston.

Chris O’Hare was the last person who came the closest to Elliott’s fabled record back in 2016 when he ran a 3:52.91 in New York while 57 other guys have gone sub-four minutes for the mile and not improved Elliott’s time.

Yet Kerr took four minutes off it just two months after the Olympic 1500m bronze medallist came agonisingly close with a 3:52.27 back in January.

READ MORE: Kerr breaks Elliott’s record

Such was the quickness of the time that the 24-year-old Scott also broke Elliott’s 32-year-old British 1500m record in the process.

Only world 10,000m silver medallist and double world indoor 3000m champion Yomif Kejelcha and double Olympic and four-time world champion Hicham El Guerrouj have gone faster over the mile.

Kerr also lies eighth on the indoor 1500m all-time list and only Olympic 1500m and double European champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen and double world indoor 1500m champion Samuel Tefera went quicker in 2022.

Yulimar Rojas wins by a metre 

Yulimar Rojas started 2022 where she left off in 2021 as the Olympic and double world triple jump champion broke her own world record outright at the World Indoor Championships in Belgrade.

A jump of 15.74m saw the 26-year-old Venezuelan smash not just her indoor world record of 15.43m – set in Madrid two years ago – but also her outdoor mark of 15.67m which she set on her way to Olympic gold at last year’s Tokyo Olympics.

She had already jumped a championships record-equalling jump of 15.36m in the fifth round but it was 15.74m that got those in the stadium on their feet in awe.

Rojas, as she usually did, dominated the competition and won by a metre, an unprecedented winning margin in the discipline. There’s a reason that triple jump is measured in centimetres and not metres.

The best part of all of it is that Rojas knows how good she is. Whenever the Venezuelan is about to take off she commands the stage and gives the impression that she’s in disdain if the crowd don’t turn their heads to watch, quite correct given the fact that she has now leaped further than anyone else indoors or outdoors.

The fact that 14.63m was enough for Rojas to win world indoor gold in Birmingham four years ago shows just how far the boundaries have moved.

Yaroslava Mahuchikh defiant in Belgrade 

This was the moment of the World Indoor Championships. Yes, there were three world records from Rojas, Duplantis and Holloway but the resilience on and off the field that Mahuchikh portrayed was something that will stay with anyone in that arena for a long time.

Mahuchikh is an Olympic high jump bronze and world silver medallist but winning World Indoor gold in Belgrade amidst the backdrop of war in her native Ukraine has to be her greatest achievement.

She cleared 2.02m in the Serbian capital – seeing off Australian Eleanor Patterson, who took silver with a first-ever clearance of 2.00m which broke the Oceania record – to add a World Indoor title to her European Indoor title from last year in Toruń.

Yaroslava Mahuchikh escaped Dnipro when the Russian military started shelling the city, made a three day drive from Ukraine to Belgrade and became World Indoor champion in the high jump ??

She's now collected her gold medal ?#WorldIndoorChamps ?? pic.twitter.com/NmPGdjkkRO

— AW (@AthleticsWeekly) March 19, 2022

Mahuchikh knew that gold was hers after Patterson failed to clear 2.04m. The crowd in the arena leapt to the feat in admiration of the 20-year-old and cheered as she lifted the Ukrainian flag above her head.

In the press conference, Mahuchikh explained how she escaped Dnipro to the sound of Russian shelling on February 24 – the first day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – and had a three day car journey through the Ukrainian countryside to Belgrade.

The fact she even competed was remarkable but to get over 2.02m to win gold was historic.

Nick Willis reaches sub-four miling landmark 

We’re going back to January 29 for this one but the achievement was as equally as good as anything from the World Indoor Championships, though it was slightly different.

Yes, it wasn’t a world record but at the Millrose Games Nick Willis became the first person ever to run a sub-four minute mile for 20 consecutive years, a record which began 3:58.15 aged 20 in 2003 for the University of Michigan at the Notre Dame Meyo Indoor Invitational in Indiana.

The 38-year-old New Zealander finished ninth with 3:59.71 in a high quality race which saw Ollie Hoare take victory in an Australian record of 3:50.83, the fourth quickest mile of 2022. Josh Kerr also finished second in 3:52.27 and has since then clocked 3:48.87 in what was a British and European record and the third fastest in history.

"As the crowd cheered my name on the start line I almost had to hold myself back from tears." @nickwillis chats to @TimAdams76 on how he felt being the first person to run a sub-four minute mile over 20 consecutive years ?

Watch on Youtube ➡️ https://t.co/OMOJPQiWwG pic.twitter.com/kwcSuzk2iV

— AW (@AthleticsWeekly) February 24, 2022

Willis has won Olympic 1500m silver and bronze, a world indoor 1500m bronze and in 2006 became Commonwealth 1500m champion but this achievement – more about longevity than speed – can be placed alongside his plethora of medals.

Those who watched Roger Bannister’s first sub-four minute in 1954 would never have imagined that somebody 68 years later would do that for 20 consecutive years.

Willis, whose wife Sierra Boucher now coaches him, told AW that he almost had to hold himself back from tears on the start line in New York three months ago.