Forty years since the World Athletics U20 Championships began | News | Heritage | World Athletics
Feature16 Jul 2026
Forty years since the World Athletics U20 Championships began
Tina Iheagwam wins the world U20 100m title in 1986 (©
It was two minutes before midnight on Wednesday 16 July 1986 that Peter Chumba entered the track and field history books. Running barefoot at the Olympic Stadium in Athens, the 17-year-old Kenyan injected a 2:04 final 800m to emerge victorious from the men’s 10,000m at what was known at the time as the IAAF World Junior Championships.
In doing so, Chumba became the first ever world junior champion at what is now known as the World Athletics U20 Championships. He went on to win the 5000m three days later, notching a double that has since been matched by Haile Gebrselassie, Daniel Komen and Assefa Mezgebu.
While the latter trio all went on to make a name for themselves on the global senior stage – the Ethiopian Gebrselassie as one of the distance greats of all time, the Kenyan Komen as a world champion and world record-breaker and Mezgebu as the third man in that classic 2000 Olympic 10,000m final in which his compatriot Gebrselassie and Kenya’s Paul Tergat slugged out their epic duel – Chumba disappeared into obscurity.
Peter Chumba on his way to winning the 1986 world U20 10,000m title (©
Still, 40 years on, those inaugural World U20 Championships stand out as a launch pad for talented teenagers who proceeded to make their mark in the senior global track and field arena.
Some of them didn’t manage to make the podium in Athens, or even the finish line. Indeed, you have to dig deep into the archives to discover that Brahim Boutayeb was alongside Chumba in the lead group in that 1986 10,000m final before dropping out at halfway. Two years later, the unheralded young Moroccan was crowned Olympic 10,000m champion in Seoul.
Peter Rono was another surprise gold medal winner in the South Korean capital: “the most unexpected Olympic 1500m champion since Luxembourg’s Josy Bartel in 1952,” Mel Watman ventured in his report for Athletics Today.
In Athens Rono took 1500m silver in 3:45.52, 0.90 behind his Kenyan teammate Wilfred Kirochi. At the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, with several leading contenders absent or below full fitness, Rono seized the day to win gold ahead of Peter Elliott.
In doing so, he became the first in a long line of Olympic champions to emerge from Brother Colm O’Connell’s remarkable middle and long distance running stable at St Patrick’s High School in Iten.
And, unlike Peter Chumba, Wilfred Kirochi didn’t fade away. After retaining his world junior crown ahead of Noureddine Morceli in Sudbury in 1988, he claimed Commonwealth silver behind Elliott in 1990 and senior world silver behind the Algerian Morceli a year later.
Of the inaugural world U20 champions crowned in Athens in 1986, four proceeded to establish themselves as major forces in their events at senior level: Javier Sotomayor, Colin Jackson, Mikhail Shchennikov and Ilke Wyludda.
Javier Sotomayor in action at the 1986 World U20 Championships (©
Sotomayor won the men’s high jump title in Athens with 2.25m and went on to dominate his event, winning Olympic gold in Barcelona in 1992, plus two world titles outdoors and four indoors. The Cuban also set three world records outdoors, the last of them the 2.45m clearance in Salamanca that remains intact today.
Hollis Conway took world U20 silver behind Sotomayor in Athens with 2.22m and proceeded to claim two Olympic medals (silver in 1988, bronze in 1992), and world indoor gold and outdoor bronze in 1991.
In taking the 110m hurdles title in 13.44, Jackson turned the tables on his British nemesis Jon Ridgeon, relieving him of the European U20 record he set ahead of him at the continental junior championships in Cottbus the previous year and relegating him to the role of distant silver medallist in 13.91.
Ridgeon, who was a member of the victorious British 4x100m relay team in Athens, subsequently regained the upper hand in their rivalry, claiming a senior world silver medal behind Greg Foster of the US in Rome the following year, equalling his own British record of 13.29, with Jackson third in 13.38.
Thereafter, however, Jackson – who had taken Commonwealth Games silver in Edinburgh just two weeks after his world U20 victory – forged ahead and the unfortunate Ridgeon became bedevilled by injuries. At the Seoul Olympics in 1988, Jackson finished second and his British teammate, hit by a viral infection, fifth.
Jackson went on to become a star of the event. In addition to his Olympic silver, he won two world titles outdoors, one indoor, four European outdoor gold medals, four indoors (one of those in the flat 60m) and two Commonwealth golds. The 110m hurdles world record he set at the 1993 World Championships in Stuttgart survived for 12 years. He also held the world indoor 60m hurdles record (7.30) for 27 years.
“When I consider my career, the World Junior Championships gold is one of my most memorable races,” Jackson wrote in his autobiography. “I’ll always remember it because it had all those ingredients that I would need later to be a champion.”
Ridgeon, meanwhile, has enjoyed a highly successful post-competition career, since 2019 as Chief Executive Officer of World Athletics.
Jon Ridgeon anchors Great Britain to 4x100m victory at the 1986 World U20 Championships (©
Shchennikov won the men’s 10,000m race walk title in Athens in 40:38.01 and went on to become one of the leading race walkers of his generation. Competing first for the Soviet Union and later for Russia, he claimed four successive world indoor 5000m race walk titles between 1987 and 1993, and also became a European indoor champion on three occasions.
Outdoors, his senior career proved similarly distinguished. Shchennikov held the world record for the 20km race walk, won the European 20km title in Helsinki in 1994, and claimed world silver medals over the distance in 1991 and 1997. At the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, having finished seventh in the 20km race walk, he returned to win silver in the 50km event.
Wyludda was a decisive winner of the women’s discus, throwing 64.02m, and retained her title in Sudbury two years later. The East German won Olympic gold in Atlanta in 1996 – four years before developing septicaemia and having her right leg amputated.
She was a finalist at the 2012 Paralympics in London and won shot put bronze at the 2015 World Para Athletics Championships. She died in 2024, aged 55.
Wyludda’s East German teammate Franka Dietzsch finished runner-up in that inaugural world junior final, with 60.26m. She went on to claim a hat-trick of world senior titles: in 1999, 2005 and 2007.
Three other podium placers in Athens achieved global gold medals in the senior arena: 100m bronze medallist Maicel Malone of the USA (as a relay runner), East Germany’s 200m bronze medallist Katrin Krabbe, and 400m bronze medallist Sandie Richards of Jamaica.
Soviet Olimpiada Ivanova, 15th in the 5000m race walk, won two world 20km titles, while Britain’s Fiona May, eighth in the long jump in Athens, won three world titles for Italy (one of them indoors) – after claiming world U20 gold for her native country in Sudbury in 1988.
Hassiba Boulmerka failed to make the finals of the 800m and 1500m but the Algerian was crowned Olympic 1500m champion in Barcelona in 1992.
Simon Turnbull for World Athletics Heritage
