2025 World Championships Daily Dispatch #3: Beat The Odds

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In track and field championships, some events are wide-open; others have a heavy favorite. Both can be fun to watch, as the uncertainty of a close battle or the amazement of watching an all-time great at work are both entertaining. But the best moments in all of sports tend to fall under a third category: watching David take down Goliath in a huge upset.

In yesterday’s evening session, there were two athletes going for the “Tokyo-Tokyo double,” meaning they had won the 2021 Olympics, 2022 and 2023 World Championships, and 2024 Olympics and were trying to complete the five-fecta. One succeeded and the other failed. Mondo Duplantis didn’t just win his fifth straight global gold, of course; he continued to literally and figuratively raise the bar, breaking his own pole vault world record for the fourth time this year and the fourteenth time overall with a 6.30m clearance. He hasn’t lost a competition in over two years and the next closest vaulter in history is now nearly half a foot below him, but it’s still impressive and emotional to watch the GOAT soar higher and higher.

The other Tokyo-Tokyo aspirant was Soufiane El Bakkali, who’s been on every global podium in the steeplechase going back to 2017 and headed into the final riding a four-championship win streak. El Bakkali is known for his unstoppable finishing kick in the final lap, and so it was no surprise to see him hanging out at the back of the field for most of the race before moving up onto world record holder Lamecha Girma’s shoulder in the last lap with a fifth gold medal seemingly his to lose.

But this time, El Bakkali couldn’t match the legendary finish of Colorado-based Kiwi Geordie Beamish, who’s become famous for his ability to summon superhuman speed from seemingly nowhere at the end of a middle-distance race and hit the finish line first in the final step of the race. He did it at World Indoors in the 1500m, and he’s done it over the years in any number of races and distances. Before last night, however, he’d never won a steeplechase in his life.

The race, like the men’s 10,000m, was historically slow, and Beamish’s winning time was only 8:33.88, but that’s no matter. Beamish went from being the 31st-fastest steepler in the world this season who’d never won a global medal outdoors to a World champion. The most hardcore of On Athletic Club or Coffee Club podcast fans will insist that they saw his victory coming all along, but the reality is that the odds of this outcome were incredibly long.

Similarly, critics may complain that Ditaji Kambundji won her first World title in the 100m hurdles in part because Olympic champ Masai Russell and World champ Danielle Williams didn’t live up to their potential in the final. To some extent, that’s true: Russell has twice run under 12.20 this season, and she ran 12.44 in the final. Williams is usually a great championship performer but she finished seventh in 12.53. And Williams’s teammate Ackera Nugent, the Diamond League final champion, didn’t even make the final after running 12.63 in the semis.

But Kambundji also ran the race of her life at exactly the right time. She set a 0.16 second personal best to win in 12.24, a faster winning time than either Russell’s in 2024 or Williams’s in 2023, and she vaulted up to seventh on the all-time list. It was a huge and fortuitously-timed leap forward for the 23-year-old, who before yesterday was known more as a 60m hurdles specialist.

The other biggest news out of the National Stadium was another upset of sorts, but not in a final and not until after the race had concluded. The men’s 1500m rounds, which have already been topsy-turvy to begin with, continued to deliver drama as a heavily stacked first semifinal put 2023 bronze medalist Narve Nordas and American Ethan Strand on the wrong side of the “Q” cutoff. The second heat was even more dramatic, as Olympic champ Cole Hocker fought his way through the crowd to initially finish second in the heat, but his fighting for position was a little too rambunctious for German Robert Farken and the meet officials, who ultimately disqualified him for jostling Farken. USATF appealed unsuccessfully, and now the 1500m final will only feature one of the top five finishers from last year’s Olympic final. On paper, this is Josh Kerr’s race to lose, but if the string of upsets has shown, anything can happen in the final.

You can listen to Mac Fleet, Eric Jenkins, Chris Chavez, and more unpack every step of those races and drop predictions, picks, and analysis on all the events to come with our reaction show live from Tokyo, as well as daily Good Morning Track and Field shows. You can also catch up with all our athlete interviews over on the CITIUS MAG YouTube channel, and subscribe to make sure you don’t miss any of the action.

Race Of The Day: Men’s Steeplechase

About two laps into the steeplechase final, more than a few viewers started to ask their couchmates and group chats the same thing: Why are they letting this race play right into Geordie Beamish’s hands?

It’s one thing to not take Beamish and his 8:09.64 personal best seriously heading into Tokyo, but Soufiane El Bakkali, Lamecha Girma, and all the other athletes in the race were surely watching two days earlier when Beamish had gotten tripped up, fallen down, and been stepped on in the final lap of the preliminary race, only to get up and smoothly kick his way back into qualifying position with complete composure. It should’ve been a no-brainer for with sub-8 not to let that guy anywhere near the front with a lap to go in the final.

By the time things picked up in the second half, the door was open for Beamish — or really anyone else — to contend for the medals. First, it was Dan Michalski, doing a solid impression of his training partner Kenneth Rooks’s two-laps-out move that helped him secure an Olympic medal last year. Michalski opened up a momentary gap with around 600 meters to run, but it didn’t last long and he would end up ninth (a totally solid performance for a first World Championship appearance). Then Girma moved to the front at almost the exact same place where he took a scary season-ending fall in Paris, and while he stayed on his feet this time, he couldn’t lose the competition.

El Bakkali came off the final water jump in position near the front, and the sense of deja vu turned into a feeling of inevitability. But El Bakkali either didn’t see Beamish coming up in his rearview or couldn’t have gone any faster, and this time around, El Bakkali got a taste of the medicine he’d been doling out for years.

The injury-prone Beamish hadn’t raced much this season, with only four races total and his best result being a runner-up finish at the Stockholm Diamond League. But perhaps that only helped the talented Kiwi fly under the radar long enough to trick the field into serving him up the perfect race scenario for his skillset, and when the time came, he was more than ready.

Athlete Of The Day: Ditaji Kambundji

We talked a little about why Ditaji Kambundji’s performance was such a surprise to hurdles prognosticators, but it’s worth spending a little more time singing the praises of a true game-day performer.

Kambundji’s two best 60m hurdles performance indoors, including her #2 all-time 7.67 in Apeldoorn, came at the European and World Indoor Championships. In three of the last four seasons, Kambundji’s best mark of the year in the 100m hurdles has come at the World or European Championships. And her next two fastest times this season before this breakout came at the European Team Championships and the Diamond League final — it’s clear that bright lights and high stakes bring the best out of the 23-year-old Swiss athlete.

Kambundji has risen into track stardom initially in the shadow of her older sister Mujinga, who’s currently taking a break from racing after winning the World Indoor title in the 60m as she’s pregnant with her first child. But with this victory, Ditaji is unequivocally a major player in the athletics world in her own right.

12.24 is on the top-ten all-time ahead of names like 2021 Olympic champion Jasmine Camacho-Quinn, Paris silver medalist Cyrena Samba-Mayela, and 2019 World champion Nia Ali. And with Tobi Amusan coming back into form this year, the U.S. duo of Masai Russell and Grace Stark having career-best seasons, and even athletes like Nadine Visser breaking through to the highest level, Kambundji had to beat a stacked field in one of the event’s most stacked eras to claim her gold.

Upset? Yes. Fluke? No way.

Photo Of The Day

Three-time World champ Grant Holloway made it through the first round of the 110m hurdles… but the fourpeat looks to be an uphill battle, as he only snagged the final auto qualifier in his heat and looked visibly upset at the finish.

Social Moment Of The Day

Cole Hocker’s disqualification in the 1500m was the subject of a lot of discussion among analysts and fans alike. See it for yourself.

What’s Coming Next

Two track and two field event finals will be decided on Day 4, as the men’s hammer throw sets up a clash between Olympic champ Ethan Katzberg and U.S. champ Rudy Winkler. The men’s high jump is one of the most wide-open competitions of the entire championships and the winner is anyone’s guess. And on the oval, the women’s 1500m will see Faith Kipyegon going for an unprecedented seventh global title and Grant Holloway trying to beat the odds to fourpeat in the 110m hurdles.

The semifinals of the women’s 400m will ratchet up the hype for the inevitable clash between Marileidy Paulino, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, and Salwa Eid Naser, whereas the men’s 400m semis are likely to only increase Jacory Patterson’s favorite status. And we’ll get our first look at the entrants in the men’s 800m, where World champ Marco Arop and Olympic champ Emmanuel Wanyonyi will open another chapter in their grand rivarly.

We’re nearing the halfway point of this year’s World Championships already, but it feels like the fun is just getting started. With uncertainty hanging heavy in the air over the finals yet to run, it really feels like even the unlikeliest of outcomes are possible.

Until next time — Catch up on anything you may have missed on the CITIUS MAG YouTube channel, Twitter, and Instagram and don’t forget to subscribe to the CITIUS MAG newsletter for more updates on the 2025 World Athletics Championships.