“The journey has been awesome. To be able to sit in this seat next to some of the best athletes in the world at such a young age, it’s really exciting so I am just trying to do as best I can here and represent Team USA as well as I can. There’s just a lot of excitement going into this weekend.” – Sixteen-year-old Cooper Lutkenhaus (USA) – men’s 800m. The youngest USA athlete ever at a world championship.
Hundreds of hours, countries you never heard of, a reason to get up before dawn. The 2025 World Athletics Track & Field Championships. Awesomeness from otherworldly creatures with blemish-free skin, and octopus-level flexibility. Wouldn’t have watched the whole damn thing if I had two working knees.
That’s a lie. But I might have skipped a couple days of the three week-long Vuelta de Espana bike race. I have cable AND streaming. My wife is so good to me, and has her own TV and BBC.
Track & Field is educational and most of my best friends are coaches. Teachers.
Sub-consciously, I will watch a competition and think, what can I learn from this? Student. (Checks notes.)
A tiny improvement can be a great thing.
Mondo DuPlantis. No, I did not make up that name for the world-record-holding pole vaulter. The Swede retained his pole crown as he broke the world record for the 14th time, on his third and final attempt at 6.30 meters at the National Stadium in Tokyo.
He does it an inch at a time. Drama?
“I know people think that I just do it in my backyard all the time. But it does not work that way, even though I have racked up quite a few of them (records). You have to get the numbers right. You have to get everything perfect and every tiny little detail right to make it,”
Guessing he practices.
Learn for tomorrow.
You want drama? Try a 26.2-mile foot-race for glory and enough cash to buy your entire village. Practically operatic.
Typical technique in this super shoe epoch, you take it easy, maybe draft behind a pacer at a constant pre-ordained speed until thirty kilometers are covered, then pick up the pace until all your opponents fade away.
But international championship races without pacers, that’s something different. Because there is often that one jokester who forgets to play his role. Some similarly avaricious idiot you might have to outkick.
After 42.195km raced in stifling conditions, the 2025 World Athletics Championships men’s marathon was decided by the smallest of margins.
In a sensational finish inside the Japan National Stadium, Tanzania’s Alphonce Simbu crossed the finish line contiguously with Germany’s Amanal Petros to win the world title in 2:09:48.
Simbu’s world gold is the first-ever won by a Tanzanian athlete in track & field. It was also the closest-ever margin of victory (0.03 seconds) in a marathon at the world championships.
“It”s like the 100m,” Petros reflected after just failing to win gold in a photo finish. “Coming into the finish, I was thinking about winning, so a bit of me is feeling very sad. But I have to accept it. As an athlete, you have to learn for tomorrow, train hard, keep going and be thankful for the silver.”
Get knocked down, you get right back up.
Dave Monti failed to mention Geordie Beamish matriculated at Northern Arizona University and might have done some cross-country work for the Lumberjacks. Otherwise excellent DyeStat coverage from which I excerpt.
Beamish did not pass El Bakkali until the two rivals were inside of the last 10 meters. It was unclear whether Beamish surprised the Moroccan, but El Bakkali looked shocked when he realized that he had lost. He wept openly in the mixed zone under the stadium and did not stop to speak with the media.
Beamish’s victory was made even sweeter because of the injury troubles he had since last summer when he failed to get out of the preliminary round at the Paris Olympics, and because he fell in his preliminary heat here and got his nose stepped on by another athlete. Indeed, he had only raced the steeplechase twice this year prior to these championships.
Totally clear to me, the Lumberjack alum captured gold because the Moroccan did not run through the finishing tape. At Flagstaff, we were always taught to celebrate after the finish line.
Can we learn to love our rivals?
When you watch track and field for the first time, you may wonder why the sprinters seem about to punch someone – okay, milers, too – while meanwhile the pole vaulters are all hugging one another. The latter have learned a lesson – you compete against the event, not against each other. (We could discuss competing WITH the event, but that’s a higher level I am not yet ready to divulge.)
It’s the clock, not Kung-Fu Kenny. The opponent is not the obstacle, the bar is.
Do you remember the lady shot putters jumping around, hugging, practically tumbling over one another like Golden Retriever puppies? Gives me hope. Like society still has one last throw.
Take a deep breath before your last gasp effort.
Katie Moon and Sandi Morris are the best of friends. They’ve competed against each other in over eighty events before the World Athletics Championships Tokyo 25. That’s Morris 52, Moon 29.
Doesn’t tell the whole story. Sandi won big earlier, with Katie, reigning Olympic & World Champion, winning all that counts of late.
The lead see-sawed between them, but it was Moon who ultimately triumphed, making a jiggling clearance on her final attempt at 4.90 meters to win a global title for the second time at the Japan National Stadium.
The valiant Morris could not match that height, registering a best of 4.85m. Good enough for her fourth (4!) silver at this event. Second best is awfully good.
“All my medals are special, but this one is the one,” Moon said. “The older you get, it gets harder. I don’t know how many years I still have in me, and to have my family here made it very special. I love the fact that today’s medalists are all above 30. We have respect for each other.”
Next time, let a magic number be your PED.
222. I saw a gold necklace on a black throat. Salwa Eid Naser, the 23-year-old Nigerian-born Bahraini, recently served a two-year suspension for drug ban violations – “whereabouts unknown” – but she’s back now. Seeking inner peace and winning the bronze in the 2025 Women’s 400 meters. Hopefully she won’t have to forfeit any of her World Championship rewards.
333. Saw a dark tattoo on yet darker skin. Thank God Al Gore invented the internet.
I’ll be honest, was surprised to learn 666 means “Show Love And Care.”
Don’t box yourself in.
Ruth Wysocki: Watching the World Championships and reflecting on my adventure 30 years ago. After a disappointing 4th place finish at Nationals, I was called at the very last minute to replace an “injured” Regina Jacobs at the World Championships in Gothenburg. At age 38, I arrived in the athlete’s village about 15 hours before my first round race. Ended up as the only American in the final, finishing 7th.
Now a bit disappointed/frustrated with the Americans who insist on hugging the rail. I can’t remember how many times Vince O’Boyle told me to stay out of trouble and be in position when it is time to move!
Cole Hocker, I’m talking to you. Just because you got lucky last time – and the time before that – don’t expect the same luck next time. Hope is not a tactic.
This from Joe Henderson. Chris Hazen, my step-son, asked my view of highlights from the World Championships. That was easy. They were U.S.-based distance runners, and only one earned a medal.
That was Cole Hocker, and his medal was gold in the 5000. He won the same way he did the 1500 at the Paris Olympics a year ago.
Hocker took an unexpected route to his gold. He was disqualified from the 1500 semi for a pushing incident in the homestretch.
The 5000 came a week later. It was thought to be his secondary event. Hocker had won it at the U.S. trials with a relatively slow time and placed only third in the fast 1500.
He didn’t contest the 1500 final in Tokyo. And he won the longer race — with a 52-second last lap. That’s easy to remember, because long ago I ran 440 yards — and nothing more — in 52.
Here, I will confess my best time for a quarter mile was seventy-two seconds. Yeah, you read that right. 01:12. You don’t get to be the World’s Slowest Professional Road Racer without some mad skills.
Disqualified, Hocker was scared straight.
I had the ability to shift focus and say, ‘Whatever. I can be pissed about it tonight but then let’s move on.’ Immediately, I knew I had one less race on my legs for that 5000m. Let’s take full advantage, get off my feet and get my mind right.”
https://citiusmag.beehiiv.com/p/cole-hocker-citius-mag-podcast-2025-world-championships-recap
Losing can be its own victory.
Talk about the agony and the ecstacy. Fourth place.
[DIGRESSION. Today’s sign of the apocalypse. Spelling looked wrong, so I googled ‘ecstacy’ – still spell good – and got “Ecstasy is the common name for a drug called MDMA.” Ecstacy, the emotion, is on page 2.]
Sometimes your best just ain’t good enough. Fourth place. All that work. No medal. No podium.
Congratulations – there are only three other people in the world as capable as you. Wow, gosh and golly. Stunning. Some of the best people I have ever known finished fourth. Kenny Moore. Don Kardong.
And now Shelby Houlihan. Tainted carne aside, imagine the narrative skein she’s been through of late and what it took for her to fail at such a high level. Like maybe she paid the price.
Maybe she learned her lesson.
I know I did – 444.
A great recap only Dog could provide.
Thanks.