European Athletics can announce the three finalists for the women’s Rising Star award ahead of the Golden Tracks awards night which will be held in Skopje, Republic of North Macedonia on 26 October and streamed on the European Athletics YouTube channel.
From a long-list of 10 athletes, the three finalists were decided based on a four-part voting process with a public vote, a Member Federation vote, a media vote and a European Athletics expert panel vote each accounting for one-quarter of the overall vote.
Last year’s winner was Serbia’s Angelina Topic who upgraded her bronze medal from the 2022 European Athletics Championships to silver in Roma 2024 before returning from an injury which ruled her out of the Olympic final with victory at the 2024 World Athletics U20 Championships in Lima.
In alphabetical order, the three women’s Rising Star finalists for 2024 are:
Phoebe Gill (GBR)
- European U18 800m best and second on world U18 all-time list with 1:57.86
- Olympic 800m semifinalist
- British 800m champion
It has been a record-breaking breakthrough year for Phoebe Gill, culminating with the secondary school student making her Olympic debut in Paris at the age of 17, the youngest Brit to make a British Olympic team in athletics since Moscow 1980.
It all started in Belfast in May when Gill ran an extraordinary 1:57.86, just two weeks after celebrating her 17th birthday to shatter the previous European U18 800m best of 1:59.65 which had remained on the record-books since 1979.
And Gill defeated a field including Jemma Reekie to win the British Championships in Manchester the following month to book her place on the British team for Paris 2024 where she reached the semifinals.
Jana Koscak (CRO)
- World U20 heptathlon champion
- World U20 heptathlon leader with 5977 points
Injury derailed Jana Koscak’s bid to win the European U20 heptathlon title last summer but the precocious Croatian belatedly opened her major title count with gold at the World Athletics U20 Championships in Lima.
In cool and windy conditions, Koscak was unable to challenge her world U20 leading score of 5977 points but the 18-year-old - who is also a 1.92m performer in the high jump - tallied 5807 points to take away the gold medal at the World U20 Championships.
And by virtue of a 2006 birth year, Koscak will have another opportunity to win gold at the European Athletics U20 Championships in Tampere, Finland from 7-10 August 2025.
Adriana Vilagos (SRB)
- European javelin silver medallist
- European Throwing Cup javelin winner
- Second on the 2024 European list with 65.64m
Still only 20, Adriana Vilagos is already a double European senior medallist after winning her second successive silver medal in the javelin in Roma 2024.
The Serbian didn’t progress through the qualifying round at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games but Vilagos didn’t dwell on this disappointment, rebounding only a few weeks later by taking her first ever victory in a Diamond League in Silesia with 65.60m before improving her Serbian record to 65.64m in Zagreb to finish the year ranked second on the 2024 world list.
Will Vilagos follow in the footsteps of her compatriot Angelina Topic and become the second successive Serbian winner of the women’s Rising Star award at the Golden Tracks?
Last 10 women's Rising Star winners
- 2023 - Angelina Topic (SRB)
- 2022 - Elina Tzengko (GRE)
- 2021 - Femke Bol (NED)
- 2020 - not held
- 2019 - Yaroslava Mahuchikh (UKR)
- 2018 - Elvira Herman (BLR)
- 2017 - Yuliia Levchenko (UKR)
- 2016 - Nafissatou Thiam (BEL)
- 2015 - Noemi Zbaren (SUI)
- 2014 - Mariya Kuchina (RUS)
- 2013 - Anita Hinriksdottir (ISL)
The women’s and men’s European Athlete of the Year finalists will be announced tomorrow.
Steven Mills for European Athletics