Field events at the Tokyo World's

Greece went to Tokyo expecting to garner between 1 and 3 medals. It turned out that it was the most conservative estimate that was realised.     

M. Karalis was, once more, second to the great Duplantis. But that silver medal in pole vault came only after some nail-bitting moments. A 5.75 m jump was enough to qualify for the final and exactly 12 athletes managed that. Among the victims were J. Obiena and P. Lisek, both with 6 m personal records. The final started with E. Sasma fouling out at 5.55 m and 7 athletes reaching 5.90 m. The next height, 5.95 m turned out to be crucial with Duplantis clearing it at his first try, Marshall and Kendricks at their second, while Karalis failed twice. Had he not passed at his third attempt he would have been pushed out of the podium. But he managed on his third try and then went on to clear 6 m on his first jump securing his second place, Marshall and Kendricks (as well as Collet who had gambled after missing twice at 5.95 m) missing this height. Both Duplantis and Karalis moved to 6.10 m and when Duplaintis cleared it, after Karalis had missed, the latter moved to 6.15 m and then to 6.20 m, instead of going for 6.10 m and Greek record. He explained later that although Duplantis is his close friend, when it comes to the competition he is there to beat him. Duplantis (who had jumped 6.15 m to make sure to keep the lead in the competition) moved to 6.30 m after Karalis went out at 6.20 m, passed it on his third try and the rest is history. 

The women's pole vault started with the injury of M. Caudery during the warm-up of the qualifiers. And given that reigning olympic champion, N. Kennedy,  was out due to injury, K. Stefanidi absent due to pregnancy and W. Murto in bad shape (she no-heighted at 4.25 m in the qualifiers) the event was more open than usual. And with E. McKartney (third performer among those present in Tokyo) out of the final due to injury, this removed one more favourite from the event. The good news was the return to great shape of S. Morris. She proved this by winning silver jumping 4.85 m on her first try while K. Moon failed once and let the remaining attempts for 4.90. Moon passed on her second attempt (which was her last), Morris failed and went for broke at 4.95 m. But she did not pass and K. Moon was once more world champion. (The two american twins, Amanda and Hana Moll, that I have been following since the Trials, did exactly the same jumps in the final and ended tied in 6th place with 4.65 m, just above M.J. Bonnin who has had a so-so outdoors season and could do no better than 8th). 

The year 2025 has not been a good one for M. Tentoglou. With recurring injuries, he managed just one good competition, jumping a world-lead 8.46 m in Madrid in June. After his disastrous Diamond League final, one could not reasonably expect him to shine in Tokyo. But his 8.17 m jump in the qualifiers allowed some timid hopes. The qualifiers saw the elimination of L. Adcock, and O. McLeod who figured among the favourites (to which one should add the absence of W. Pinnock who had just changed alliance). Unfortunately even the slim hopes were shattered when Tentoglou, in clear discomfort, could not manage a decent jump and could not even make the first 10. The event was won by M. Furlani with 8.39 m ahead of T. Gayle, 8.33 m. S. Ehammer, with 8.30 m, was fourth, and after his failure in the decathlon, went home medal-less. 

At this point I must explain the new structure of the finals introduced in Tokyo and which I find much better than the previous ones. It applies to horizontal jumps and throws, where the maximum number of attempts is six. Previously the 12 finalists had three attempts and the 8 first went on to the remaining three. Now after the first three, the first 10 are allowed a fourth, then the first 8 a fifth and only the first 6 are given a final sixth attempt. The overall number of jumps or throws is the same as with the previous system but I find this organisation more fair. (It would be interesting, once we have more data from the new organisation, to compare to the ancient one, i.e. how many times an athlete classified 9th or 10th with the new system managed to improve his position to one among the first 8 in the fourth attempt and how many times an athlete in the 7th or 8th position with the ancient system managed to move among the first 6 in his sixth attempt).

The women's long jump saw the elimination in qualifiers of one of the favourites L. Iapichino, together with J. Saywers and E. Brume, all of them 7-plusers. Given that M. Beck-Romantchuk is suspended for a doping offence and the reigning champion I. Spanovic, not in great shape this year, has opted for the triple jump, this made the final somewhat more open. T. Davis-Woodhal announced from the outset her intentions with 7.08 m. She improved to 7.13 m, winning the event ahead of M. Mihambo who was one cm shy of 7 metres. N. Linares with 6.92 m pushed H. Kaptcha out of the medals (the latter being, before the championships, probably the most serious french hope for a medal at the World's).  

Rojas is back

In the women's triple a jump of 14 m was necessary for the qualification to the final and the favorites managed that without problems, although it was clear that S. Ricketts was not in top condition. The big question was that of Y. Rojas who was coming back after two year's absence and serious injuries. Rojas is a great competitor and although I don't like her style (at all) I acknowledge her great talent and tenacity. She finished third with 14.76 m. Will she go back to her 15+ performances? Time will tell. L. Perez-Hernandez won with a 14.94 m jump. She is very strong but I don't particularly like her style which I find rather heavy. T. Lafond is exactly the opposite with probably the best style I have seen in a female triple jumper. I have been closely following her since the beginning of the season and rejoicing seeing that she was steadily progressing. In Tokyo her final jump was over 15 m but she left a small mark behind and, with 14.89 m, she had to content herself with silver. 

In men's triple jump J. Diaz-Fortun dropped out injured already at the qualifiers and W. Claye could not make it to the final (both being 18-plusers). F. Zango could not jump over 17 m and finished in 7th place, and A. Diaz-Hernandez was 6th with 17.19 m. The unlucky one was Y. Triki who with 17.25 m had a place on the podium up to the last jump only to see A. Dallavalle push him out with a 17.64 m personal best jump (L. Martinez being third with 17.49 m). P. Pichardo, who was leading up to Dallavalle's jump riposted with 17.91 m (and celebrated it with one more manifestation of his not so nice character, screaming "who's the best?").

G. Tamberi finally presented himself at the high jump event (he had hesitated for quite some time) but he exited at the qualifiers in an event where O. Doroshchuk and J. Harrisson missed the podium, an event won by H.Kerr with 2.36 m (I don't like him so I will not spend more time on the high jump). In women's high jump the interesting things started at 1.97 m. M. Lake, with 1.93 m was already out (which did not astonish me, despite her 2 m jump at the Diamond League). Patterson and Levchenko with one missed try were tied at 5th place while Olyslagers, Topic and Mahuchikh were first, Zodzik (ex-Bielorussian now jumping for Poland) was second on count-back. At 2 m Olyslagers succeeded at her first try while Mahuchikh failed and decided to continue at 2.02 m. And then rain started pouring. When the competition started again, 40 minutes later, Patterson, Topic and Levchenko failed at 2 m but Zodzik passed at her third try, moving to second place. And it was really interesting to follow the anxiety of Topic, taking refuge under the umbrella of Patterson, waiting for the outcome of the attempts at 2.02 m. Long story short, Mahuchikh failed and Topic won her fist major medal, tying with her for bronze.

Before the championships I had voiced, on more than one occasions, my worries concerning R. Crouser's health. The news were not encouraging given the gravity of his elbow injury. I have thus written that if Crouser could not, after all, participate in the championships the USATF should consider replacing him with Kovacs. But Crouser is a great champion, to my eyes the greatest shot putter of all times. He prepared cautiously without straining himself. After his victory he explained that the first time he threw "hard" this year was in the qualifiers of the event. P. Otterdahl did not make the final but the US still had three athletes in it. In the end only Crouser made it to the podium. T. Walsh was, one more time, unlucky, being pushed out of the medals by the last throw of 21.97 m of U. Muñoz and on count-back from L. Fabbri both having thrown 21.94 m. Crouser leading the event with 21.99 m, consolidated his victory with a 5th throw of 22.34 m, winning his third title in a row. (He will be 36 in 2028 in Los Angeles and it would be great if he could fetch a fourth olympic title there).

J. Schilder had a hard time qualifying for the women's shot put final (while the qualifiers saw the elimination of two of the three US athletes, a well-known noxious effect of the US Trials that push the athletes to get in shape too early). M. Wesche took the command of the event with a 20.06 m personal best at first throw, keeping that position up to the last where first C. Jackson with 20.21 m and then J. Schilder with 20.29 m pushed her down to third. S. Mitton who was second up to that point with 19.81 m was left medal-less. V. Allman, who is to my eyes the best female discus thrower in the post-doping era, was deprived of gold in the previous two world championships by what I call "lucky throws" of her opponents. B. Feng won in 2022 while L. Tausaga, who had barely managed to obtain the qualifying minimum in the US Trials, won in 2023. All those throwers were present in Tokyo, together with S. Elkasevic(-Perkovic) who had won the world title in 2013 and 2017. (The only recent world champion absent from Tokyo was Y. Perez, who had won in 2019, and who cannot participate in official championships having deserted Cuba in 2022). Allman took control of the final from the first throw. J. Van Klinken secured the silver medal with a first throw of 67.50 m (after two fourth places in 2022 and 2023) while Elkasevic, Tausaga and Feng finished 5th, 6th and 7th respectively. Allman threw 69.48 m on her final attempt consolidating her victory (one cm less than what Tausaga threw in 2023, and far from the championships record 71.62 m of M. Hellman, going back to 1987. Note that Perkovic won in 2017 with 70.31 m).

Men's discus final was a very special event. It was the only one I could not follow. The heavy rain had the event postponed and the greek television channel I was following ran out of time. So I had to follow the event on the World Athletics radio and the live results. (I understand that WA is selling the rights to the championships broadcast and thus puts restrictions on how you can follow them live depending on your country. But now that the championships are over, not having access to the (ex-)live stream is preposterous). S. Mattis, L. Okoye, M. Ortega and F. Dacres, all 70+ m throwers did not make it to the final. Mykolas Alekna (I have to specify his given name since his brother Martynas, who finished 7th, was also present in the final) took control with 67.84 m at the second throw. K. Ceh was never in contention finishing 8th. M. Denny was third up to the 5th throw but A. Rose (who throws for Samoa) pushed him out of the medals with a 66.96 m throw. And then in the last throw D. Stahl, with 70.47 m, added a third title to the two he had won in 2019 and 2023. Alekna will have to wait for his first major title (but he is young so he can afford this).

I was hoping to see those two be the stars of javelin

Instead, we got a new star

The women's javelin throw started with the elimination of throwers who were among the best this year S. Borge, Q. Dai, M. Rotundo, of the reigning champion H. Kitaguchi, and of the only 70-pluser still active today, M. Andrejczyk. The greek hope for a medal, E. Tzengko barely made it to the final and the anguish was even bigger for A. Villagos: she could manage a decent throw only at her third attempt. Her 66.06 m would have sufficed for gold in the final but finals are different beasties. M. Little also had a qualifying throw that would have sufficed for victory. But at least she managed to take home the bronze medal. In the final V. Hudson, who has the world leading performance this year finished 10th. Villagos did only slightly better at 8th place. And Tzengko could throw no further than 62.72 m finishing 5th, just a few weeks after having dominated the Diamond League final. Olympic silver medallist J. DuPlessis was third till the last throw when A. Sietina passed her and Little with a 64.64 throw. But the gold medal went to an Ecuadorian athlete. At the qualifiers, an almost unknown South-American thrower, J. Angulo, qualified with a national record of 63.25 m. and she did even better in the final with 65.12 m which sufficed for gold. 

But in the men's event it was the old guard that shone

In the men's javelin qualifiers the only 90-pluser who did not make it was L. DaSilva. A. Peters threw 89.53 m, which would have sufficed for gold in the final, while J. Weber had a throw at 87.21 m that would have given him the bronze medal. The final was a disaster for most favourites. Olympic champion A. Nadeem finished at 10th place. Reigning world champion N. Chopra was 8th. J. Yego injured himself on his first throw and finished 6th. World leader J. Weber could do no better than 86.11 m finishing 5th. A. Peters, the world champion of 2019 and 2022, finished at second place. But it was a veteran of the event, the olympic champion of 2012, K. Walcott, who won the event with a 88.16 m throw. (Before the championships he was just 10th in the year's best list).

In the months preceding the championships E. Katzberg was not the dominant figure in men's hammer throw. B. Halasz and R. Winkler had better performances than him and had beaten him on a few occasions. However when the final started in Tokyo it was clear that he was untouchable. M. Hummel led for just one throw with a personal best of 82.77 m (which sufficed for silver) but then Katzberg threw the 5th best performance of all times, 84.70 m, backing it up with two throws beyond 83 m. Halasz managed to save the bronze medal and Winkler finished 5th. The great A. Wlodarczyk was present at one more championship, finishing 6th in the final. The world leader B. Andersen did not make the final, just as her team-mate and third world performer R. Richeson. In the end it was the two chinese throwers J. Zhao ad J. Zhang who grabbed silver and bronze. But the protagonist of the event was the reigning olympic and world champion C. Rogers who with 80.51 m won the event and moved to second place in the all time list.

The blog is 12 years old

Twelve years ago I decided to create a blog on Athletics. I had some experience with blogging and after having read Juliand's excellent monograph "Rethinking Track and Field" I decided that I had some ideas of my own that I would like to cast into writing. I had been publishing longer articles in "New Studies in Athletics" (a journal, alas, killed by Lord Sebastian's belt tightening) but I had ideas that would not justify a full article and which were still worth publishing. So, I decided to create this blog and, as a tribute to Juliand, I plagiarised his title. (A funny remark is in order here. While writing this post I decided to go back to the original "Why rethinking" article and I discovered that the photo of Juliand's book was blurred. And I hadn't noticed that for 12 years! I replaced it and, at long last, the photo is now sharply focused). 

I would never have predicted that the blog would be alive for more than a decade. I try to publish between 30 and 50 articles per year and I have never let a month pass without publishing something. The one thing I cannot control are the views. and to tell the truth I cannot understand what is happening. Here is the history of the blog views.

I don't have any explanation for the spikes in 2017 and 2019. The huge spike in 2025 appeared at the time of the World Championships but I don't think that there was a real correlation. What one can claim is that since 2023 there are more visits to the blog. But are those due to physical readers or caused by the training of some Large language Model (that is learning how to blog in my style)? Some of the spikes are associated to huge (unexplainable) spikes in some particular article: why is the article "Before the curtain falls: a jaunt into gerontology" the third most viewed one with a huge peak of 5 k in July 2019, when it was published (and has between 0 to 3 daily views since)? Normal views look rather like the one of the pole vault history

 where there are a few decades of daily views. Anyhow the blog has surpassed 400 k views for roughly 500 articles.

The crucial question is where do we go from here. The truth is that I like writing articles for the blog. I do not hesitate to be irreverential and critical. My readers know that there are athletes that I like and others that I don't (even some that I despise). So, as long as I have ideas for new articles I will continue writing the blog. Let us meet here next year.

Combined events at the Tokyo World's

Once more, together with my Décapassion friends we made predictions for the World Championships Decathlon podium. And, once more, we could not predict what happened in the end, (although, to be fair, Pierre Gousset correctly predicted the victory of Neugebauer). Here is my prediction for the first four: 1) Garland, 2) Skotheim, 3) Neugebauer and 4) Owens-Delerme. And I had added that I did not think that LePage, Warner and Victor would play an important role. But let's start at the beginning.

Just before the first event Warner dropped out of the decathlon due to some injury sustained, supposedly, during the warm-up. Then the withdrawals started. Before the end of the first day Steinforth, Oiglane, Roosen, Ehammer and LePage had dropped out. For Ehammer and Roosen that was due to the fact they fouled out in the high jump missing the first height 1.93 and 1.81 m respectively, and in the case of Ehammer we are talking about an athlete with a 2.08 m personal best. Tilga also missed his initial height of 1.90 m but decided to continue and finish his decathlon (fouling out in the pole vault as well, and finally dropping out from the 1500 m). 

Garland had a very strong first day finishing with a total of 4707 points which is historically the third best performance, after those of O'Brien, 4743, and Eaton, 4728. Curiously, Neugebauer, who has a first-day personal best of 4685 points could do no better than 4455 at fourth place behind Skotheim and Owens-Delerme who had totaled 4543 and 4487 respectively. The things were going more or less along my predictions, and I was glad to notice that Owens-Delerme was back in shape, having shed this "heaviness" that I had noticed in some of his previous competitions appearances. 

Then the second day started and disaster struck. Skotheim had a bad race in the hurdles, an event where his personal best is an excellent 13.97 s. He hit the fifth hurdle, passed the sixth in total disequilibrium, stumbled and reaching the seventh he pushed it over with his hands. He completed the race in 15.77 s but was, as per the rules, disqualified. (I think that some day I will have to discuss the rule that forbids knocking down the hurdles but, for now, this has to wait). With Skotheim out, things started looking brighter for Owens-Delerme who had won the hurdles in 13.65 s. And the bad second day had just started for Garland. Discus is the best event for Neugebauer. Last year in the report on the Olympics I wrote that the discus was the event where Neugebauer lost the title. Well, this year that was where he won it. He threw a series of 54, 55 and 56 m, 8 metres ahead of Garland. 

And Owens-Delerme with 46 m showed that he had at last decided to work seriously on his discus throw. Pole vault did not change the order but Garland's 4.80 m allowed Neugebauer and Owens-Delerme who jumped 5.10 m, to close the gap to less than 100 points. Meanwhile Victor, who was sixth at that point, no-heighted at 4.50 m (well, he had only one unsuccessfull jump) and exited the decathlon. Kopecky also no-heighted at 4.70 m but he decided to pursue and, unlike Tilga, ran also the 1500 m (although not whole-heartedly). 

The javelin sealed the fate of Garland, when he threw 5 m behind his personal best while Neugebauer improved his by the same amount, with 59.78 and 64.34 m respectively. Owens-Delerme was practically at his personal best with 58.79 m and Kaul, once more, excelled with a 78.19 m throw. After the ninth event Neugebauer was already leading with 8072 points, with Garland second, 8057, Owens-Delerme third with 7958 and Kaul fourth with 7732 points. The last two being excellent 1500 m runners (excellent for decathletes, that is) one could expect some changes in the classification. The 1500 m was indeed a great race, run on a wet track. Garland was resigned to be demoted to bronze (Kaul was 300 points behind and not a real menace despite his 4:20) and jogged in 4:45. Owens-Delerme had a chance at winning the title. 

He ran the 1500 m like the good old days finishing in 4:17 but Neugebauer drew on his reserves and ran a huge personal best of 4:31, winning the title. In the end the order was Neugebauer 8804, Owens-Delerme 8784, Garland 8703, Kaul 8538. Twelve athletes scored over 8000 points, the ones below-par (not counting the ten who had dropped out or had fouled out in some event) were the area champions of South America and Asia, Ferreira and Fei. The former has a personal best of 8213 points and his presence in Tokyo was perfectly justified (and his 7927 point performance did not clash with the remaining ones). The one that stuck out like a sore thumb was that of the chinese decathlete's meager score of 7347 points. I find that the idea of qualifying the continental champion is a bad one. World Athletics should limit themselves to a wild card for the winner of the Continental Tour, who is, unavoidably a member of the elite.

While the men's decathlon was a gripping event, the women's heptathlon was somehow a let-down. We were expecting a duel between Thiam and Hall but it didn't materialise. (The regular readers of my blog know that I am an unconditional fan of Thiam and that I have a great esteem for Hall. Had the two been really in contention I would have trouble choosing my champion). Nafi Thiam coming from a difficult year with injuries and problems with the belgian federation was not the Thiam we have been admiring for years. And after participating in the first day of the heptathlon (half-heartedly?) she called it quits after the first event of the second day. Will she come back next year? Will she be back in great shape and as combative as ever? Those are questions to which nobody can answer at the time being. So let's go back to the World heptathlon and the new queen Anna Hall. 

In June I wrote an article after Hall's fantastic performance at the Götzis meeting, where she not only broke N. Debois' legendary 800 m heptathlon record but she also equalled C. Kluft's record of 7032 points. (I cannot resist the temptation to point out here that the record of Kluft and Hall is in fact the heptathlon world record. The records of J. Joyner-Kersee that culminated with the 7291 point performance were all obtained with the ancient javelin. However the women's javelin was first modified to one with a thicker rear part in 1991 and then, just as the one for men, with a 3 cm shift of the centre of mass towards the front from 1999. And while the javelin records obtained with implements with the ancient specifications were erased, World Athletics decided, for unfathomable reasons, to let JJK's records untouched. But for me the real world record stands at 7032 points). Going back to Hall, I must say that I was slightly disappointed by her performance in Tokyo. She was some 150 points behind her score in Götzis. But she was not the only one. The two other protagonists in Götzis, Dokter and Araujo, have also scored some 150 points fewer than in Götzis. T. Brooks did not compete in Götzis prefering the Décastar of Talence. And somehow she managed with 6581, to score 200  points more than in Talence (and even some 50 points more than in the US Trials). A great long jump performance of 6.79 m allowed her to share the bronze medal with K. Johnson-Thompson. 

The athlete who shined at Tokyo was K. O'Connor. I have seen her for the first time this winter when she finished second in the World Indoor pentathlon. She repeated this feat in the outdoor heptathlon in a competition where she improved her personal bests in five out of seven events. And I found out that she is an excellent javelin thrower, since with 53.09 m she managed to beat E. Oostewegel who is usually the winner of the heptathlon javelin. (By the way, Oosterwegel did not progress since her bronze medal in the Tokyo Olympics and her ninth place in Tokyo is the worst among her four participations in a world championship). Back to O'Connor. Trying to learn more about her, I found out that she has been competing since she was 13 with a 2:18.05 performance over 800 m and 5.13 m in the long jump. She discovered the heptathlon in 2017 and passed 6000 points in 2019. But her 6714 total in Tokyo places her among the elite of combined events (around the 30th performer of all time). It goes without saying that I will keep an eye open for her.

From the 24 qualified for the Tokyo heptathlon only 19 finished the event (A. Kälin did not even start, having injured herself during the long jump qualifications). Among them only 15 scored over 6000 points. The disappointment was the way-below-par performance of A. Lazraq-Khlass, who was silver medalist in last year's Europeans with 6635 points and who scored just 5758 points in Tokyo. A series of injuries have greatly perturbed her preparation. Let us hope that she will be ready for next year's Europeans.