Great Britain fail to win gold amid worst World Championships return for 20 years

Great Britain and Northern Ireland failed to win a gold medal at a World Athletics Championships for the first time in 22 years as the team missed their medal target in Tokyo.

GB ended the nine-day competition with a total of five medals, which represented their joint-lowest overall return since Helsinki in 2005, when they won three.

The team’s fortunes were summed up in the event which provided their final medal opportunity in Japan, as the women’s 4x100m relay quartet – winners of Olympic silver last year – finished two-tenths of a second off the podium.

That confirmed Great Britain would fail to win a relay medal, of any colour, for the first time since Paris in 2003.

That was also the last occasion they finished without a gold.

Set a target of achieving a top-eight finish in the medal table, the 64-strong British squad finished 21st.

It comes after the team equalled their best haul of 10 medals to finish seventh at the previous World Championships two years ago.

On that occasion, they brought home two gold medals, three silvers and five bronze from Budapest.

They also achieved GB’s best return at an Olympics for 40 years with 10 athletics medals at Paris 2024.