8 Takeaways from dramatic and controversial night at the 2025 World Championships

TOKYO – The stars shined on Friday night at the 2025 World Athletics Championships. Five gold medals were awarded on the night and all five went to people who had already won a global outdoor championship – Rai Benjamin (400 hurdles), Femke Bol (400 hurdles), Noah Lyles (200), Melissa Jefferson-Wooden (200), and Pedro Pichardo (TJ).

Below, we give you eight takeaways on Friday’s action but we begin by analyzing the men’s 5,000 heats and women’s 800 semis.

Jakob Ingebrigtsen says “I am not myself” but will be in the 5,000m final to defend his world title

Just as in the 1500-meter heats on Sunday, Ingebrigtsen’s chances of advancing were in jeopardy in the home straight, but this time he had enough to make it through, holding on to finish 8th in 13:42.15 and grab the eighth and final qualifying spot by .19 over India’s Gulveer Singh. Ingebrigtsen did not look convincing, but he will be on the start line for the 5,000m final on Sunday.

“I gave my all,” Ingebrigtsen said to meet organizers. “I am not myself. I had to do what I could today. I was not sure would I make the final [sic] but here I am. I don’t have any idea what I am going to do in the final. I will try my best. Can it be a medal for Norway? I don’t know, maybe. We will see.”

To the Norwegian press, Ingebrigtsen said the difference between today and the 1500 prelims was enormous. He is healthy now, he noted – just short on training after missing so much time.

The 5,000 is the last chance for the US men to medal in a mid-d or distance event and it will include all three Americans

Cole Hocker (13:13.41 for 3rd in heat 1), Nico Young (13:13.51 for 4th in heat 1), and Grant Fisher (13:41.83 for 6th in heat 2) had little trouble advancing to the final with a top-8 showing.

That doesn’t mean there was no drama in 5000 prelims as 10,000 bronze medallist Andreas Almgren failed to make the final in heat 1 (9th in 13:16.38), as did Ethiopia’s Kuma Girma (DNF). In heat 2, 1500m favorite Niels Laros was up front but then he pulled up midway through with an injury to his left calf/Achilles and dropped out. Soufiane El Bakkali and Luis Grijalva were DNSs.

Belgium’s Isaac Kimeli, 31, was impressive in heat 1 as he flashed the speed that has led him to victories in Heusden and Lausanne this summer to take the heat ahead of Hocker and Young. Ethiopian teen sensation Biniam Mehary won heat 2.

Hocker didn’t talk to the media so we have no idea how his 1500m DQ has impacted him. Young said he’s more confident now after finishing 5th in the 10,000.

Grant Fisher says “everything is on the table” for the 5,000m final

Fisher deployed a familiar strategy in today’s 5,000 prelims, taking the lead with 1200m to go and making a long push to the finish (he ran his last 1600 in 3:56.05 and last 1200 in 2:54.36).

“You’ve seen a lot of races this weekend where they become really unpredictable the slower they go those last few laps [sic],” Fisher said. “I wanted to decrease that uncertainty a bit, and I thought winding it up with three laps to go would do so.”

Fisher said it would have been nice if he could have dropped enough guys by the end that he didn’t need to kick, but that is not what happened. And it revealed how difficult it will be to drop anyone in the final. If Fisher has any designs on dropping the serious contenders, he will have to move earlier in the race or close harder than 3:56 for his last 1600.

Fisher said he will have to sit down with coach Mike Scannell to develop a race plan for the final. He admitted that the “best-case scenario” would be for someone else to pick up the pace and decrease the uncertainty for him. But he knows he can’t rely on that happening.

“You can’t always count on someone else to execute your race plan for you,” Fisher said. “So everything is on the table.”

The women’s 800 final is all set and American Sage Hurta-Klecker will be in it

Hurta-Klecker made her first global team this year at age 27 and she has made the most of it. Today, she almost ran her PB as she ran 1:57.62 (her pb is 1:57.53) to place 4th in semi #2, and that was good enough to grab the final time qualifier for the final.

The other time qualifier went to 1500 medallist Jessica Hull, who seemed more happy to have set the Australian record in the 800 today of 1:57.15 to take third ahead of Hurta-Klecker than she did when she won her bronze in the 1500. Hull had a lot to be proud of. She started the year with a 1:59.99 pb and improved that to 1:58.68 at GST Kingston but this was a more than 1.5-second pb from that.

The 800 final will include the four fastest women in the world in 2025 as Keely Hodgkinson, Audrey Werro, Georgia Hunter Bell, and Lilian Odira all advanced as auto qualifiers. The fifth (Ethiopia’s Tsige Duguma), sixth (Oratile Nowe of Botswana), and 7th fastest women (Anais Bourgoin of France) on the year all failed to advance. And 2023 world champ Mary Moraa continued to show signs of life after an up-and-down season by running 1:58.40 to win heat 1.

American Maggi Congdon didn’t make the final after running 1:59.95 for 7th in semi #1.

Rai Benjamin won the 400m hurdles, but not without controversy

Rai Benjamin attacked the 400m hurdles final with ferocity and his lead over rivals Karsten Warholm and Alison dos Santos was so big after hurdle 9 that it looked as if Benjamin might break Warholm’s 45.94 world record set on the same Tokyo track four years ago. But Benjamin was tiring and he clattered hurdle 10 badly.

“Anyone that runs the 400 hurdles knows, when that lactic hits, it gets really tough,” Benjamin said. “Running that fast through [hurdle 8], it was bound to happen. Wish I would have cleared it, because I think the time would have been fast had I not had that mishap.”

Benjamin still had enough for the gold in a season’s best of 46.52, but silver medallist dos Santos (46.84) was gaining on him at the end. Qatar’s Abderrahman Samba took bronze in 47.06 – his first medal since 2019 – while Warholm was left off the podium, finishing 5th in 47.58, later saying he suffered a strain in his thigh coming out of the blocks.

Benjamin hitting the hurdle almost proved even more costly than just slowing him down as he hit it with so much force that it clipped Ezekiel Nathaniel’s hurdle in lane 6, causing the left side to move forward by several inches.

Initially, the meet referee decided to disqualify Benjamin for violating World Athletics Technical Rule 22.6.3 – in which a runner is DQ’d if they “directly or indirectly knock down or displace a hurdle in their or in another lane in such a manner that there is effect or obstruction upon any other athlete(s) in the race, and/or another Rule is also infringed.”

But the video referee quickly stepped in and reversed the DQ, and protests by Nigeria, Brazil, and Qatar were all denied. Nathaniel said he thought Benjamin deserved gold.

Benjamin learned about the DQ while sitting in the “hot seats” used for time qualifiers in the sprints but was in good spirits upon being reinstated.

“What’s a World Championship without a little bit of drama?” Benjamin said.

Was it the right call to reinstate Benjamin? Clearly, he violated the first part of the rule – he displaced Nathaniel’s hurdle with his sloppy 10th hurdle. But did it have an effect or obstruction upon Nathaniel? That part is less clear. Nathaniel did not appear obstructed, but one could also argue that, by definition, the act of jumping over a misplaced hurdle affects an athlete. And Nathaniel missed out on a medal by just .05. Plus, the whole point of the hurdles is to serve as an obstacle – one of the challenges of the event is balancing running fast with successfully clearing each hurdle properly.

Ultimately, the officials did not view the incident as worthy of a DQ, and Benjamin is now a world champion to go with the Olympic title he won last year. In 2026, however, he will be shifting his focus away from the hurdles.

“I won’t be racing too much next year, but I told Noah, he better watch out, because I am running the 200 next year and the 400,” Benjamin said. “No hurdles.”

LRC Archives: The Greatest Race Ever? Karsten Warholm (45.94) Defeats Rai Benjamin (46.17) to Obliterate 400M Hurdles World Record & Win Olympic Gold – LetsRun.com

Men’s 400 hurdles race replay

The women’s hurdles was much less dramatic as Femke Bol did what she always does when Sydney McLaughlin-Levone isn’t in the race – win. Bol clocked a seasonal best 51.54 to win, with the US’s Jasmine Jones second in a 52.09 pb. Former world record holder and Olympic champ Dalilah Muhammad almost didn’t start as she was battling an injury in the warmup and was only 7th in 54.82. After the race, Muhammad sounded like she’s considering backtracking on her previously announced retirement plans.

Noah Lyles wins fourth straight 200m world title

In the last six years, Noah Lyles has suffered only two losses in 200-meter races: he lost to Andre De Grasse and Kenny Bednarek at the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo and to Letsile Tebogo and Bednarek at the 2024 Olympics. All told, he has won 32 of his last 34 200m races, and that includes Friday’s final in Tokyo, where he ran down Bednarek and 21-year-old Jamaican Bryan Levell to become the 11th man to win four consecutive golds in any event at Worlds by running 19.52.

Here is the full list of men to win four or more consecutive world titles:

After running 19.51 in the semis on Thursday, Lyles had said he did not intend on letting any of his competitors lead off the curve, but Levell, running to Lyles’ outside in lane 7, got out incredibly quickly (10.03 at 100m) and led off the turn, with Bednarek second and Lyles third. But in a way, that was fitting, because Lyles has been winning races coming from behind since his earliest days in the sport. Once again, he maintained his form superbly and had the strength to hold off Bednarek (19.58), Levell (19.64), and fourth-placer Letsile Tebogo (19.65).

“It’s never an idea of oh gosh, I’m back here, I have so much work to do,” Lyles said. “It’s okay, I’ve been here before, let’s do what I always do.”

It was a tight one, though. Midway down the home straight the leaders were four abreast, and the race would finish as one of the deepest in history. Before tonight, no one race had featured more than two men under 19.70. This one had four. Tebogo’s 19.65 is the fastest time not to medal ever, and overall, all-time marks for place were set for 3rd, 4th, 5th (Zharnel Hughes 19.78), 7th (Carli Makarawu 20.12), and 8th (Sinesipho Dambile 20.23).

This race was hyped as an Olympic rematch between Lyles and Tebogo after Lyles ran last year’s final in Paris with COVID. This time, he got the better of Tebogo, but this time it was Tebogo who was not at 100% after managing a knee injury all year that sapped his power out of the blocks.

“We lowered our expectations because we [weren’t able to do much work] because it was back-and-forth with the injury,” Tebogo said. “So I’m happy with being the fourth-fastest man in the world.”

And while Lyles was grateful to have won his fourth straight 200m world title, he said it cannot replace the sting of never winning his signature event at the Olympics.

“You have to get it right that day, every four years,” Lyles said. “I don’t think any amount of World Championship wins in the 200 will [get rid] of that empty feeling that I have for that Olympic 200 gold.”

That said, if Lyles does win a fifth straight 200m world title in Beijing two years from now, he’ll be the first man to do so in any track event.

Bednarek, meanwhile, remains Mr. Silver. He has now finished second in four of the last five global 200m finals – to De Grasse in 2021, to Lyles in 2022 and 2025, and to Tebogo in 2024. It has been the story of Bednarek’s career – incredibly consistent, but always second-best. Bednarek’s 19.58 tonight was the second-fastest time of his career. But the four fastest times of his career have all come in defeats – two to Lyles, two to Tebogo.

Melissa Jefferson-Wooden’s dominant season continued

Jefferson-Wooden won her first global title in the 200 the same way she did in the 100, by running a pb (21.68) and destroying the field (winning by .46, just shy of Allyson Felix’s record winning margin at Worlds of .53). The 2025 campaign by MJW has been one of the best in sprinting history as she’s won 19 of 20 races counting heats and moved to #4 all-time in the 100 and #8 all-time in the 200. She’s the first woman to sweep the 100 and 200 at Worlds since Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce in 2013.

The only women’s sprint years that we’d definitely put ahead of MJW’s year would be Elaine Thompson-Herah‘s 2021 season when she won two Olympic golds and ran 10.54 and 21.53, Flojo‘s 1988 season where she was undefeated, won two Olympic golds and ran 10.49/21.34 WRs, and SAFP’s 2022. SAFP suffered four losses that season and was 2nd in the 200 at Worlds, but she also ran a sub-10.7 a ridiculous seven times.

Talk about clutch, the men’s triple jump was a thriller

In the sixth round of the triple jump, Italy’s Andrea Dallavalle was sitting in fourth position at 17.24m — the same place the 25-year-old finished at the 2022 Worlds.

Then he jumped a massive pb of 17.64m — his first pb in four years and an improvement of nearly a foot (11.4 inches or .29m) from his previous best lifetime jump. How did previous leader Pedro Pichardo of Portugal respond? By going 17.91. The moment he landed, Pichardo knew he had won his third global outdoor title and started to preen for the cameras, shouting, “Who’s the best, baby?” Pichardo won the Olympic title in this stadium in 2021 and now he has won the world title here too.

Talk about the action on our world-famous fan forum.

• MB: World Champs Day 7, Official Discussion Thread – We’ll break it down for you live from Tokyo at 11:15 am ET.
• MB: Noah Lyles delivers yet again in the 200m – 19.52 FTW. – Ties Usain Bolt with four straight world titles.
• MB: Breaking: Rai Benjamin has been DQd from the 400 hurdles after dominating it – And now he’s been re-instated.
• MB: Happy birthday Jakob – He advanced to the 5000m final as the last qualifier (8th) in his heat. All three Americans, Grant Fisher, Cole Hocker and Nico Young, advanced as well.
• MB: Laros appreciation thread – DNF in his 5000m heat.
• MB: anyone have any reactions to Laros doing 8k of threshold after 1500m R1 heat?

Shortly after the race, we broadcast a live reaction show from Tokyo on our social media channels. Watch it below or catch it on demand as a podcast by joining our Supporters Club.