In Budapest, Hungary last week, the top track and field athletes gathered for the World Championships, a major meet that served as a preview of sorts of what to expect at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

For the U.S. team, things couldn’t have gone much better as the Americans dominated with 29 medals: 12 gold, eight silver and nine bronze. Jamaica was next with 12 medals: three gold, five silver and four bronze.

The U.S.’s performance was not unexpected. After all, the Americans had 26 medals at the Olympics in 2021 in Japan (Kenya was second with 10 medals) and 33 medals at last year’s World Championships in Eugene, Ore. (Ethiopia, Jamaica and Kenya tied for second with 10 medals apiece).

Still, last week’s meet showed how deep a team the U.S. has and how the athletes have performed well in a crowded landscape. Usually, the Olympics are four years apart and the World Championships are held every other year. But because of COVID-19, the Olympics were pushed from 2020 to 2021 and the World Championships from 2021 to 2022, meaning there are four consecutive years (2021 to 2024) with either an Olympics or Worlds meet. Throw in two Olympics Trials, and it is a busy stretch of high-level meets.

Here are five U.S. athletes (in alphabetical order) whose performances at this year’s World Championships and other meets make them ones to watch at next year’s Olympics when track is in the spotlight.

Ryan Crouser

By now, there is no doubt Crouser is the best shot putter in history. At the World Championships, he won the event with a throw of 23.51 meters (77 feet, 1 ¾ inches) even though he was recently diagnosed with two blood clots. That was just shy of his world record of 23.56 meters, which he set in May.

How dominant was Crouser? His best throw was more than a meter further than silver medalist Leonardo Fabbri of Italy (22.34 meters) and Joe Kovacs of the U.S. (22.12 meters).

No one could have been surprised with the result. After all, Crouser has the four longest and seven of the top 10 longest throws in history.

Crouser, who turns 31 in December, won the gold medal at the 2016 and 2020 Olympics as well as last year’s World Championships. He is the first man to win two Olympics and Worlds gold medals. If he’s healthy, he should add to that total next summer in Paris.

Anna Hall

Jackie Joyner-Kersee is the only U.S. woman to win a gold medal in the heptathlon at the Olympics or World Championships. She accomplished the feat at the 1988 and 1992 Olympics and the 1987 and 1993 world meet.

Since then, it’s been a long drought for the U.S., but Hall looks like she’s on track to end that 30-year streak.

Hall, who doesn’t turn 23 until next March, finished second in the heptathlon at this year’s World Championships. She had 6,720 points, just shy of Great Britain’s Katarina Johnson-Thompson, who had 6,740 points.

In May, Hall scored a personal-best of 6,988 points, which is the fifth-best in history. Joyner-Kersee, who holds the world record of 7,291 from the 1988 Olympics, is the only U.S. woman who has accumulated more points than Hall.

Hall was third at last year’s World Championships. She couldn’t compete in the 2021 Olympics because she sustained a broken bone in her foot at that year’s Olympic Trials.

Still, Hall will be ready for next summer, and she’s already ahead of the curve considering her young age. Joyner-Kersee was 26 when she won her first Olympics gold medal, while Johnson-Thompson is 30. Anouk Vetter, the bronze medalist from this year’s World Championships, is also 30.

Noah Lyles

Lyles created quite a stir on Sunday when he criticized NBA players for referring to themselves as world champions, noting the league is based in the U.S., and Canada while track is a worldwide sport. Kevin Durant and Damian Lillard were among the NBA stars reacting to Lyles’ comments, with Durant writing “Somebody help this brother.”

No matter the semantics and quibble between athletes, Lyles brought attention to the sport and his accomplishments, which were impressive.

At the World Championships, Lyles won the 100 meters (9.83 seconds), 200 meters (19.52 seconds) and the 4x100 meter relay, becoming the first man to do that since Jamaican star Usain Bolt in 2015. His time in the 100 was a personal-best, while his time in the 200 was tied for the 14th-fastest in history.

Lyles, 26, also won the gold medal in the 200 at the 2019 and 2022 World Championships, when he ran 19.31 seconds, the fastest time in U.S. history. He was the bronze medalist at the Olympics in 2021, but he’ll be the favorite for the gold next year.

Lyles is also hoping to break Bolt’s world record of 19.19 seconds in the 200. Bolt also has the 100 world record (9.58 seconds) and is the best sprinter in history. But Lyles is an all-time great and has time to add to his accomplishments.

Athing Mu

Mu, a breakout star at the Olympics two years ago, has undergone a lot of change in the past year.

She moved from Texas to California last October to train with Bobby Kersee, a legendary coach and husband of former track star Jackie Joyner-Kersee. She also had some nagging injuries, which made Kersee hesitant to have Mu race much.

At the World Championships, Mu won the bronze in the 800 meters in 1:56.61, just shy of gold medalist Mary Moraa of Kenya (1:56.03) and Keely Hodgkinson of Great Britain (1:56.34). It was the first time Mu had lost an 800 race outdoors since September 2019 when she was a high school senior. Afterward, Mu referenced fatigue as a reason why she almost skipped the meet.

“I’ve just been going through a lot,” she told reporters. “Not just this year, but the past two years. There’s been no break for me.”

Indeed, Mu graduated from high school in 2020, moved to Texas A&M for college for a year where she broke multiple NCAA records and then turned professional won the Olympics gold medal in 2021. She continued to compete last year, winning the 800 at the Worlds meet.

Mu, who turned 21 in June, will likely take some time off now, but she still has 11 months to prepare for the 2024 Olympics. She should be the favorite to again win the 800.

Sha’Carri Richardson

Richardson, 23, was among the breakout stars at the World Championships. It was the first time she competed at the meet, but she didn’t show any signs of nerves.

Richardson was the gold medalist the 100 meters (10.65 seconds) and bronze medalist in the 200 meters (21.92 seconds). She concluded her trip to Budapest by anchoring the U.S. women to a gold in the 4x100 meter relay in 41.03 seconds, breaking a meet record.

Richardson was a highly touted recruit as a high schooler in Dallas and broke two world Under-20 records in the 100 and 200 as a freshman at LSU in 2019. She then turned professional.

At the Olympic Trials in 2021, she won the 100 to qualify for the Olympics, but she was later suspended for testing positive for cannabis and missed the Olympics. She also didn’t qualify for last year’s World Championships.

Now, Richardson is showing the promise she displayed in high school and college. She will surely receive plenty of hype heading into the 2024 Olympics and could become the first U.S. woman since Gail Devers in 1996 to win gold in the 100.