The globe's finest track and field stars have descended on Doha for the 2019 World Athletics Championships, as the competition enters a new era.
The sport's grandest outdoor event outside the Olympics is being staged in the Middle East for the first time in its 36-year history, with 1972 competitors - including all 30 Diamond League champions - from 210 teams in action from Friday until October 6.
The next 10 days will also bear witness to the first world championships since 2005 where Usain Bolt, the man who set world records over 100 and 200 metres 10 years ago in Berlin, will not be competing.
In Qatar, there will be pretenders to Bolt's throne, not only as the fastest human being in history but also as the sport's most charismatic champion.
There will be past winners - including the event's most decorated athlete in history - and old rivalries renewed in the Doha heat in what could be a championships to make or break the IAAF's commitment to putting athletics firmly back on the minds of the masses.
With the Olympics less than a year away, who will take the world by storm?
LYLES OUT TO SURPASS BOLT AS JAMAICA'S GREATEST GO HEAD-TO-HEAD
It sometimes sounds trite to talk of Bolt's 'successor', but athletics may well have found its newest poster boy in American Noah Lyles.
The 22-year-old clocked 19.50 seconds in Lausanne – the fourth-fastest 200m time in history – and will have his eye on Bolt's record of 19.19.
Indeed, this could be Lyle's best chance to go under that remarkable time from a decade ago, as the 2014 Youth Olympics champion plans to double up in the 100m and 200m from next year. In Doha, he will not have so many distractions.
It means defending 100m champion Justin Gatlin, who has gone under 10 seconds four times this season at the age of 37, will face his toughest competition against 2017 silver medallist Christian Coleman. Cleared to compete after United States anti-doping authorities withdrew charges relating to missed drugs tests, Coleman ran a world-leading time of 9.81 in June and is many people's favourite for gold. Nigeria's Divine Oduduru and in-form Akani Simbine cannot be discounted, though.
Perhaps the most enthralling battle comes in the women's 100m, though, where two Jamaican Olympic champions over the distance, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Elaine Thompson, will go head-to-head. They share the world-leading time of 10.73 for 2019 and know how to handle the spotlight of athletics' most demanding events, although Dina Asher-Smith and defending world champion Tori Bowie must be considered major threats.
FELIX BACK FOR MORE METAL AS 400M HURDLES HEAT UP
Allyson Felix, the most decorated athlete in world championships history, will seek to add to her 16 medals in the 4x400m relay following the premature birth of her daughter last November.
In the individual race, all eyes are on Shaunae Miller-Uibo, who has put her sole focus on the 400m and whose 49.05 time in Gainesville this year has not been beaten.
With defending champion and world-record holder Wayde van Niekerk absent, expect Michael Norman and Fred Kerley to stage a spectacular showdown in the men's event – although perhaps 2012 Olympic champion Kirani James, beset by injury troubles in recent seasons, could spring a shock.
The real intrigue lies in the one-lap hurdle events, though.
Dalilah Muhammad broke Yulia Pechonkina's 16-year world record at the US Championships with a time of 52.20 and the Olympic champion is now hoping to add world gold to her collection by withstanding the pressure of rising star Sydney McLaughlin.
Karsten Warholm might be the second-fastest man in history in the 400m hurdles, but Rai Benjamin is ready to push him all the way in Doha, the two having both gone beneath 47 seconds in a thrilling race in Zurich. Abderrahman Samba is also a huge threat.
Warholm, backed by maverick coach Leif Olav Alnes, has compared himself to fictional financier Gordon Gekko of the motto "greed is good", as he targets back-to-back world golds. Benjamin's response? "If Karsten is Gordon Gekko, then I am the IRS."
6.86 PB/NR and a great serie of jump today on Birmingham DL! https://t.co/Kl0dLrR62N
— Nafi Thiam (@thiam_nafi) August 18, 2019
ECHEVARRIA BACK AND JUMPING FOR JOY
Juan Miguel Echevarria's 8.65m broke the Diamond League record for the men's long jump in Zurich, a distance bettered only by a massive wind-assisted 8.92m he managed in March.
Mike Powell's world record of 8.95m has long been considered out of reach, but Echevarria could at least leap closer to that mark.
Belgium's record-holder in the women's long jump is, of course, the indomitable Nafissatou Thiam, who is favourite to defend her heptathlon title after setting a world-leading 6819 in Talence this year despite having an elbow injury.
Having leapt to within nine centimetres of Inessa Kravets' 15.50m from 1995, defending world triple jump champion Yulimar Rojas is another targeting a world record - assuming the hi-tech cooling system in the Khalifa International Stadium can keep the intense heat at bay.
The conditions in Doha have prompted concerns around athlete welfare and there will be extra medical staff, water stops and ice baths available for the marathon races that get underway at 23:59 local time (20:59 GMT) to avoid the worst of the weather.
It takes more than heat and humidity to put off Jesus Angel Garcia, though. Spain's maestro race walker will become the World Championships' oldest ever competitor at the age of 49 when he gets going in the 50-kilometre event on September 28.
