Sharlene Mawdsley to make return at new $10m Ultimate Championship in Budapest

Six weeks of rehab and recovery has put Sharlene Mawdsley back on track to compete at this weekend’s newly minted World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest. With a record $10 million prize pot – including the largest first-place pay-day the sport has ever seen – Mawdsley is understandably keen to take up her 400m invitation.Before that, however, Mawdsley will have a sort of test run over 400m on Tuesday evening at the Palio Città della Quercia meeting in Rovereto, Italy. It will be her first race since sustaining a hamstring tear when competing in the 200m at the National Championships in Santry on July 25th, which subsequently forced her withdrawal from the European Championships in Birmingham last month.Assuming the Tipperary athlete can come through Tuesday’s race without any setbacks, she’ll then take up her place in the 400m at the National Athletics Stadium in Budapest, which will host the inaugural Ultimate Championship over three evening sessions from Friday to Sunday. Designed to take place every two years as conclusions to seasons without a World Athletics Championships, the Ultimate Championship will consist of 13 individual events for men and women, plus two mixed relays, with athletes qualifying not by elite invitation only.READ MOREIt intends to bring together the best athletes in the world in each event, with Mawdsley ranked 13th of the 16 women invited to take part in the 400m. Mark English and Rhasidat Adeleke are the only other Irish athletes to receive an invitation, again by virtue of their event rankings, with English seventh of the 16 athletes invited for the men’s 800m, while Adeleke is 16th in the women’s 200m.The invitations include all the Olympic champions from Paris 2024, the World champions from Tokyo last year, and the 2026 Diamond League final winners from Brussels last weekend. The remaining invitations were decided on event rankings over the last 12 months, or in some cases, by exceptional invitation.Each individual event winner will pocket $150,000, the largest winner’s prize in track and field history. The runner-up will earning $75,000, while third will get $40,000. Every athlete will leave Budapest with something, right down to the 16th and last-place finishers, who get $2,000.Mark English wins gold in the men's 800m at the European Championships. Photograph: Morgan Treacy/Inphio All events up to 800m will include two semi-finals, the top four from each advancing to the final. The 12-athlete 1,500m and 5,000m are straight finals, as are the five field events, each with eight athletes. Andrew Coscoran was inside the top-12 for the 1,500m in recent weeks but subsequently missed out by three spots, while Cian McPhillips was also on course to make the 800m before illness cut short his season.Mawdsley is the fastest woman in the 400m field in Rovereto thanks to the 50.06 seconds she clocked at the Paris Diamond League debut in June, her fourth personal best of the season. After winning her 200m heat at the National Championships in Santry, she pulled up after 80m in the final.Adeleke went on to win the 200m national title in 22.80, securing her place at the European Championships in her last attempt. The Dubliner went on to win silver in Birmingham, lowering her national record to 22.28 in the process, improving her 200m ranking enough to secure an invitation for Budapest.Mawdsley withdrew three days before the start of the European Championships due to the injury sustained in Santry, saying: “We made huge progress after I was diagnosed with a tear in my hamstring, but unfortunately the timing just wasn’t on my side”.English hasn’t raced since winning the European 800m title in Birmingham, opting instead for another spell of altitude training at Sierra Nevada in Spain ahead of Budapest. The Donegal man will have to negotiate a tough semi-final on Saturday evening if he’s to earn his place in Sunday’s final.Adeleke, who clocked 22.85 to finish sixth over the 200m in Brescia in Italy last Sunday, will race in the 200m semi-final in Budapest on Sunday evening, with the final due to take place just over two hours later.Sophie O’Sullivan is also running in Rovereto on Tuesday, joining Sarah Healy in the 1,500m. Last weekend, O’Sullivan ran an personal best of 1:58.60 in the 800m in Brescia, putting her second to Ciara Mageean’s national record of 1:58.51. Bori Akinola will race in the 100m, while Darragh McElhinney and Brian Fay go in the 3,000m and Eric Favors will compete in the shot put.