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Picture the scene. You’re standing on the start line ahead of a big race, a TV camera panning across each face in turn.

Some athletes offer a small smile and wave, others stare straight ahead, totally in the zone. The likes of American sprinter Noah Lyles jump around and amp up the crowd.

And then there’s Seamus Derbyshire. He might not be a household name, but you’ve almost certainly seen him, with the 400m hurdler going viral on TikTok for his starting line theatrics at July’s Diamond League meet in London.

Upon hearing his name, the 25-year-old emulated the character Glinda’s ‘toss toss’ of her hair from the film Wicked, before showering the camera with kisses and a love heart, a grin plastered across his face. The rest is history.

“I was sat in my flat after [the] Diamond League. It had been such a long day and me and my flatmate were just debriefing the day, sat on the sofa, and then he was like, ‘why are you on my TikTok?’,” he told BBC Sport.

“It was me doing my introduction and had a couple of hundred likes. I was like ‘that’s crazy’ and then we went to sleep.

Derbyshire, who is one of a small number of openly gay sportsmen, says his pre-race routines are “never pre-planned”, nor did he begin them with social media fame in mind.

Rather, it is part of his commitment to being his “authentic self” after years of battling anxiety around competitions.

In 2024, mental health struggles derailed his European and Olympic dreams and prompted the former European Under-20s silver medallist to reconsider his future in the sport.

Instead of quitting, he chose to “change my mindset and how I feel about competing”, hiring an additional coach, switching to solo training, and introducing his start line displays, starting with a ‘365’ tribute to singer Charli XCX.

The changes have paid dividends, with the former gymnast enjoying his most successful season to date.

In June, he became the fifth-fastest British man over 400m hurdles, running 48.47 seconds in Prague to break his personal best and achieve the qualification standard for this month’s World Championships.

Despite missing out on automatic qualification after placing third at August’s British Championships, a phone call after the “longest three weeks of my life” confirmed his selection for Tokyo.

“Last year, I had a really tough year. No matter how ready I was physically, mentally I wasn’t. It’s been the aspect that’s held me back for quite a few years,” added Derbyshire.

“Bringing my authentic self has brought me to a point where I feel comfortable again.

While his newfound fame has served as a “reality check”, opening his eyes to homophobic abuse, he says the majority of interactions have been “overwhelmingly positive”.

After growing up without a role model in sport, he hopes he can inspire future athletes.

“A lot of my gay inspiration I got through pop culture, through the music I listened to in the car with my mum, like strong female protagonists like Kylie Minogue and Gwen Stefani. I never found my source of inspiration through sport. Maybe I can be that for someone because I didn’t necessarily have that myself.

“I’ve had so many messages saying it’s so nice to see someone living the way I am. They wish they could have had someone doing that when they were younger, or parents [saying] it’s a really nice example for children.

“[The abuse] feels like such a small drop in the ocean. A lot of things people are saying, like my parents won’t be proud of me, I don’t deserve to be an athlete, I deserve to die – I know they’re not true. I work hard, I’m dedicated to my craft, and I deserve a space in sport.”

Looking ahead to Tokyo, Derbyshire is clear in his ambitions.

He isn’t thinking about dethroning three-time world champion Karsten Warholm, instead prioritising enjoyment and learning.

“My main target this year has been to get back competing and back to a place of enjoyment. Despite the standard stepping up again, that is the main priority,” he said.

“And it’s my first World Championships, so I want to be a sponge and absorb as much knowledge as I can from the people around me and the atmosphere, because moments like this don’t come around too often. I really want to relish it.”

As for whether he will debut a new routine, it’s a case of wait and see.

“The ‘toss toss’ has become that moment for my first introduction to the world stage, so that may have to be what I do in the heats,” he said.

Asked to describe the sport in which he is a double world champion, Tomas Woods has it down to an elevator pitch: “It’s basically BMX in a wheelchair.”

In WCMX – short for wheelchair motocross – athletes perform tricks over 90 seconds to accrue points. Similar to skateboarding and BMX, you get three attempts on the park to perform your best run.

For Woods, discovering the sport changed his life.

“I saw a video of people doing it in America and thought it was super cool, so I emailed my local skatepark asking whether this was something I could try,” the 16-year-old from Preston tells BBC Sport at Greystone Action Sports in Salford, where he first tried the sport, used to work part-time and is now a celebrity.

“I came down in January 2020, and in October I was in my first competition. The rest is history.”

Woods now shares tips and tricks on Instagram, doing his best to grow the sport beyond its burgeoning online popularity.

Many of Britain’s WCMX athletes are popular on Instagram, with Woods, Lily Rice and Ben Sleet attracting thousands of followers.

They post pictures of their travels and competitions, and videos of their tricks and skills – all with their wheelchairs proudly front and centre.

“The community is so vast – Australia, Brazil, all over Europe,” Woods says. “Having that online is so important.

When it comes to online popularity however, none of the British athletes can touch the man regarded as the godfather of WCMX.

The sport has grown hugely since Aaron ‘Wheelz’ Fotheringham – followed by 865,000 people on Instagram – first coined the term in 2000.

“I just threw those letters together – like BMX, but with a wheelchair,” he tells BBC Sport.

“Now I can log into Instagram and people are throwing in the craziest [stunts]. I don’t know if I imagined this, but it’s pretty cool to see the impact.”

WCMX is now worldwide and the World Championships are returning to Europe this month for the first time since the inaugural 2019 event in Hamburg. The Swiss city of Bulle is hosting the event from 12 to 14 September.

“Swiss WCMX riders are a totally different breed, so bringing it to them is pretty cool,” Fotheringham says. “It’s cool to see it bouncing around.

The question WCMX faces now is, what comes next? Is the answer: Paralympics? And if so, how does that happen?

The closest it has come to the Games was when Fotheringham memorably performed in the opening ceremony of the Rio 2016 Paralympics, when he rode down a giant ramp and backflipped through a flaming hoop.

World WCMX president Jo Woods says the sport was aiming to be included at Brisbane 2032, with hopes of a test event at LA 2028.

She says talks are ongoing with World Skate – which runs Olympic skateboarding – over it taking on responsibility, which would boost its Paralympic chances.

An IPC spokesperson told BBC Sport: “To be eligible for inclusion in the Paralympic Games sport programme, a sport must be governed by an International Federation that is either an IPC member organisation or an IPC Recognised Federation.

“WCMX is neither an IPC member International Federation or an IPC Recognised Federation and therefore is currently not eligible to apply for inclusion in the Brisbane 2032 Paralympic Games.”

The IPC states any sport seeking consideration must have a minimum of 32 countries from three regions to be regularly practising the sport.

It must also have a recognised governing body capable of running competitions and Paralympic qualifying events and be in compliance with the world anti-doping code, and have a formal constitution and regulations.

In countries like Germany, Switzerland and the United States, there are organised and active bodies. Others, including the United Kingdom, are works in progress.

There also needs to be a codified rulebook for official competitions. Jo Woods said she contacted every country with a WCMX governing body and asked for their rules before she, in her words, “mashed them all together”.

Meanwhile double women’s world champion Lorraine Truong has produced the first classification schedule, sorting which competitions athletes with varying disabilities should enter – a thorny issue in Paralympic sport.

Closer to home, access to the sport in the UK remains an issue.

Some skateparks, like Graystone, have WCMX chairs for hire on nights dedicated to the sport, but this is not universal.

A specialist WCMX chair can cost up to £16,000, with Tomas Woods’ first chair financed by his parents selling a car. He is now sponsored, but knows others are not so lucky.

“You can’t go to Halfords and buy a cheap wheelchair,” he says. “Most skateparks will have a rental fleet of skateboards and BMX bikes – to have that for WCMX would be massive.”

But the dream of WCMX on the biggest stage remains alive.

“Yeah for sure,” says Fotheringham when asked if his creation should be in the Paralympics. “I’ve heard little things here and there, so this is me personally asking [the IPC].

With just two Premier League wins since the start of April, it seems only a fool would say that Manchester United have been improving under Ruben Amorim…and yet that’s exactly what the stats suggest.

While only Tottenham have taken fewer points in their last 10 games, United’s underlying numbers suggest their performances have deserved more and, if anything, it’s the players who have underperformed more than Amorim and his much-maligned formation.

We’ve excluded penalties to show how good United have been at creating and restricting chances themselves, rather than relying on opposition clumsiness or shirt-pulling like they did to score the winner against Burnley.

As you can see, United have taken the most shots in the Premier League in the last 10 games, while only rivals Manchester City – Sunday’s Premier League opponents – have faced fewer among the 17 sides ever-present during the time frame.

While it’s worth mentioning that those 10 games include 65 minutes against 10-man Bournemouth and Aston Villa, it’s not a given that teams easily dominate games when an opponent has a man sent off, as Liverpool’s recent game against Newcastle showed.

What’s the cause of this big underperformance in both boxes? It’s hard to know for sure. It could be that the players simply aren’t good enough – in which case United buying a whole new front line and goalkeeper this summer makes a lot more sense – or a lack of confidence or just plain old bad luck.

Even so, the expected goal numbers already take that added difficulty into account so United’s players should be doing better, although both creating the worst chances and being the worst at converting chances is not a good combination.

Why does it matter how much more United have recently dominated games and been ‘expected’ to score when at the end of the day, scoring and conceding actual goals is all that matters?

While being clinical in both boxes is obviously important and United do need to work on the quality of their shots, not even the most blessed or cursed teams can ‘cheat’ their expected goal numbers forever.