2025 World Championships Daily Dispatch #8: Greatness Repeats Itself

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For the most part, it’s been a topsy-turvy World Championships so far. This has been the meet for upsets and underdogs, where favorite status seems to melt away entirely in the heat and humidity of Tokyo.

But some athletes are simply so great they cannot be denied under any circumstances. Beatrice Chebet and Faith Kipyegon are two of those athletes. In 2023, Kipyegon took double gold in the 1500m and 5000m, with the latter coming two spots ahead of Chebet, who only two years ago was still coming into her own as a true superstar. Last summer, Chebet and Kipyegon went 1-2 in the event, with the younger Kenyan’s blistering speed too much for even the 1500m world record holder. Again in Tokyo, it was the Beatrice and Faith Show, with the best distance runners of all time outclassing the field in a slow race ending in a blistering kick.

For once, the predicted outcome came to fruition, as Chebet and Kipyegon replicated their Paris dominance in a race whose winning time, 14:54.36, was nearly a full minute behind the world record. Behind them, Nadia Battocletti rounded out an incredible championship season with her second medal of the week, taking bronze ahead of American Shelby Houlihan in fourth.

Similarly, the Paris podium was replicated perfectly in the men’s 800m, where Emmanuel Wanyonyi took the field out hot then hung onto the inside lane to claim gold in a championship record 1:41.86. Marco Arop of Canada was second and Djamel Sedjati was third, the class of the field in an event where the top seven finishers all set season’s best, personal bests, and/or national records. A few days ago, this outcome looked highly doubtful as neither Arop nor Wanyonyi looked great through the rounds, but sometimes generational talent is just too much to conquer.

Speaking of generational talent: Anna Hall finally got her heptathlon gold, rounding out a set that includes a silver in Budapest and a bronze in Eugene. Considering how strong Hall has looked all year, combined with Olympic champ Nafi Thiam’s withdrawal after day 1, this was a fairly predictable outcome as well, but no less a rewarding one as Hall is a fan favorite with a very bright future ahead. Amazingly, Team USA picked up two medals in highly-improbable fashion, as Taliyah Brooks recorded a lifetime best to exactly tie 2023 champ Katarina Johnson-Thompson with identical scores of 6,581 across seven events.

The only non-finals today were the trials of the 4×100m and 4×400m relays, and that’s where we got our dose of Tokyo chaos. The U.S. men’s 4×400m, who should be able to dominate with almost any combination of runners, nevertheless found themselves battling for position at every exchange with a “B” team, which contributed at least partially to an insane handoff (see below) with Zambia that got the latter team disqualified. But Team USA isn’t smoothly into the final, however: they have to re-run the race against Team Kenya, who was also impeded, in about eight hours to decide who gets the final lane.

The women’s 4×400m had no drama whatsoever and the Americans are the heavy, heavy favorites for gold. They’re slightly less favorites against a strong Jamaican contingent in the 4×100m, but with Melissa Jefferson-Wooden likely leading off and Sha’Carri Richardson likely anchoring, they’re set up well for another gold. And the men’s 4×100m, historically a huge sore spot for Team USA, got the stick around cleanly for once — which is more than Jamaica, Great Britain, or South Africa can say, clearing the way for the Americans to only have to defeat their rivals to the north, Team Canada, in the final.

You can listen to Mac Fleet, Eric Jenkins, Mitch Dyer, Chris Chavez, and Anderson Emerole break down the penultimate day of action on the live reaction show show, as well as daily Good Morning Track and Field shows with Aisha Praught-Leer tuning in from home. 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 our last few days of live shows.

Race Of The Day: Men’s 800m

Boiling this race down to “the Paris podium repeats itself” belies just how much of a thriller it was. Emmanuel Wanyonyi took the field through 400m in 49.26, but it was no two man race: Right on Marco Arop’s heels were three other athletes coming through sub-50.

The 800m final featured two rising stars who’ve quickly made international names for themselves: Irishman Cian McPhillips and Brit Max Burgin, both 23 years old, who finished fourth and sixth. Burgin started making true waves a few months earlier, with top-three finishes at three Diamond Leagues this season. But McPhillips announced his presence in the last few days, lowering his PB an enormous 2.04 seconds over two rounds of racing and breaking the Irish national record twice, ultimately landing at 1:42.15 just 0.2 seconds out of the medals.

Wanyonyi is known first and foremost for his blazing speed and prodigious talent — while he first started making waves internationally with his fourth place finish at Worlds in 2022, it’s worth noting that he’s two years younger than McPhillips and Burgin and now a three-time medalist at 21 years old. But he also won the tactical war today, as a huge reason he was able to hang onto gold by 0.04 seconds is by holding the inside line the whole way down the straightaway, not drifting outward and letting anyone through in lane 1 as leaders so often do. As a result, everyone around and behind him had to work harder for position, and Wanyonyi came away with his second global gold but first World title.

At an ancient 27 years old, Arop is the old man of the group, so we’re going to be getting a lot more of these eight men matching up in the years to come. The more athletes get comfortable running in the 1:41s, the louder discussion of David Rudisha’s epic world record will become, but that’s missing the point: even when the favorites come out on top, the men’s 800m is absolutely loaded and hardly boring.

Athlete Of The Day: Anna Hall

The heptathlon is a famously grueling event, one where a single slip-up can make two days of hard work go to waste. Simply getting through seven different events in one piece is half the battle; that’s why heptathletes famously all do victory laps after the competition concludes, not just the medalists.

Somehow, Anna Hall makes it look easy. The 24-year-old completed her medal set with a gold in Tokyo, following up a bronze in Eugene and a silver in Budapest to finally top the podium. Hall won the shot put and the 800m, two very different events, and finished in the top four of five disciplines in an impressive display of versatility. She ended up 164 points up on Kate O’Connor in second, who had an epic performance of her own as she shattered the Irish national record to win her nation’s first medal in the event.

That’s not to say that Hall has never had to overcome adversity, as she underwent knee surgery last winter and still returned for a fifth-place finish at the Paris Olympics. Despite not facing Nafi Thiam head-to-head on day 2 after the Belgian’s withdrawal, but Hall’s 6,888-point winning total was still higher than Thiam’s 2024 Olympic gold and Katarina Johnson-Thompson’s 2023 World title.

Hall wraps up a season that saw her win her third straight U.S. title and clear 7,000 points for the first time on a true high, but still with room for improvement. Her high jump and long jump efforts were nowhere near her best today, a reminder that she still has huge growth potential in the future as she looks forward to a title defense in 2028 and a U.S.-hosted Olympics in 2028. Surely, the best is still yet to come.

Photo Of The Day

This chaotic and controversial handoff during the men’s 4×400m prelims led to a disqualification for Zambia and a re-run scheduled for the U.S. and Kenya for the last spot in the final.

Social Moment Of The Day

It appears the Chris Bailey, himself a member of the Team USA 4×400m pool, found out the news of the team’s run-off via our Instagram.

What’s Coming Next

The final day of action wraps up the 2025 World Championships tomorrow, with all finals, all the time for the remaining events on the schedule.

The decathlon wraps up day two action as Kyle Garland looks to make it a U.S. sweep in the multi-events, with a 146-point lead over Sander Skotheim but plenty of action left to derail things.

On the track, we get the reverse of today with the men’s 5000m and the women’s 800m. Keely Hodgkinson is the Olympic champ but only has silvers at Worlds — will this be the year she gets gold? And in the men’s 5000m, anybody could win a wide-open race… even Cole Hocker, who’s on the warpath after getting disqualified from the 1500m.

Men’s javelin and women’s high jump will round out the field events, before we get going in a series of thrilling relay finals. On paper Team USA could sweep all four — but first, the men’s 4×400m has to actually get into the final. And of course, in the highly-volatile 4×100m, anything can happen.

There’s only one day left, so savor it while you still can!

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.