Looking beyond the usual suspects

By Steve Cram BBC Sport

The season after the Olympic Games can be a fallow year for the big stars of athletics. They often take it a bit easier.

We could see one or two up-and-coming athletes taking advantage and stealing a title at the World Championships in August.

No-one knows what plans Olympic champion Holmes has for the coming season

But without being pessimistic there are few new faces who we can expect to dominate for Great Britain on the world stage.

There will of course be the usual suspects - Kelly Holmes, Paula Radcliffe and the men's 4x100m relay team.

It will be a fun year for Kelly. She will enjoy racing and taking the plaudits but no-one knows whether she has set her sights on a world title.

Paula has decided to run the London Marathon and that will come first. So, that means there is only a miniscule chance of her running the marathon at the worlds in Helsinki.

And if she competes on the track she will again be up against the same tough opponents.

The women did really well last season but what most people don't know is that senior racers like Kelly, Paula and Jo Pavey are under-pinned by a whole bunch of very good, female middle distance runners.

They are all pushing each other this year and one or two of them could break through at senior level.

The pick of the bunch is 19-year-old 800m runner Charlotte Moore. It is a big year for her because she had such a great 2002, where she reached the final of the Commonwealth Games.

Since then she has done her 'A' Levels and has found it a bit more difficult settling into the senior ranks.

If Moore doesn't move forward she could be overtaken by others

But there comes a point when a young athlete has to start realising that potential. Charlotte undoubtedly has potential and I'd like to see her come out with a bang this season.

In the field, long and triple jumper Jonathan Moore's development has been curtailed by injuries.

But he has huge ability on the world stage and he is one I would look for to come back in 2005.

Last year on the international stage American 400m Jeremy Wariner took me by surprise and he can only go on and get better.

And in the 110m hurdles, China's Xiang Liu put in a devastating performance to win Olympic gold.

It will be interesting to see if any other Chinese athletes start making a name for themselves ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

I also went over to Ethiopia in November and there are a new crop of Ethiopian athletes to watch out for too.

The IAAF has mooted some interesting changes in an attempt to try and jazz up the sport

You can also expect the supreme Ethiopian Kenenisa Bekele, Swedish heptathlete Karolina Kluft and Russian pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva to continue to put distance between themselves and their best rivals.

Off the track, the Balco steroid distribution scandal will roll on. I don't think we have seen all the fall-out from that yet.

The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) has mooted some interesting changes in an attempt to try and jazz up the sport yet again.

Any athlete ranked in the top 50 is now supposed to run in their national colours - but not their team vests. So any combination of red, white and blue for British athletes would suffice.

Evening Grand Prix events will be made shorter in the field events. There will be four rounds in the jumps and the idea is to make the event quicker.

They are also talking about making the sessions at the World Championships shorter to keep people interested.

And as usual I expect to be surprised by events on and off the track I would never have been able to spot.