Lucky No 8? Why Van Niekerk has reason to be bullish about World Champs semi-final

If Wayde van Niekerk is searching for omens ahead of his first 400m World Championship semi-final since suffering his catastrophic knee injury in 2017, the fact that he will be running Tuesday night's race in lane eight (start time 21.00) should act as something of a comfort blanket.

Lane eight - unfashionable in athletics until Van Niekerk made it iconic at the Rio Olympics in 2016 - is the position from which the South African made history by breaking the world record in winning his Olympic gold medal.

So, finding himself racing in it should help calm the nerves which must be circling the closer he inches towards redemption in Budapest, having not quite been himself for a full five years after injuring himself after the London World Championships six years ago.

Van Niekerk's progress to the potential winner's circle has been painstaking, fading to fifth in his Tokyo Olympics semi-final in 2021 and the same position in the final at the world champs in Oregon last year. But each time his times have shown an upward trend - the Tokyo semi-final was run in 45.14 sec and the Eugene final in 44.97sec.

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Said progress has hit something approaching overdrive this season, with Van Niekerk winning all eight of his races thus far, his fastest time of 44.08sec being the fourth fastest in the world this year. The last of those wins was his heat, which he won in 44.57sec, the second fastest time of the heats, on Sunday.

"It was a positive effort," he told reporters in the mixed zone afterwards. "(Great Britain's) Matt (Hudson-Smith) was having a good run so I just used him [as a point of reference] until the last 100m and then just fought