Following five gold medals won by the Kenyan women in Tokyo, Emmanuel Wanyonyi secured a victory for the men in an exciting 800m final at the 2025 Wor
Following five gold medals won by the Kenyan women in Tokyo, Emmanuel Wanyonyi secured a victory for the men in an exciting 800m final at the 2025 World Athletics Championships on Saturday.
Wanyonyi set a strong pace from the beginning, similar to his performance in the Olympic final at Paris 2024.
Defending world champion Marco Arop faced a challenge from Wanyonyi as they approached the finish line, but Wanyonyi managed to hold off Arop’s efforts.
The 21-year-old did not finish first, as Djamel Sedjati completed the race with the fastest time to win a silver medal.
Wanyonyi won against Algerian Sedjati by a margin of four-hundredths of a second, after previously defeating Arop by one-hundredth of a second in Paris.
Arop finished five-hundredths of a second behind Sedjati. The time set a new championship record of 1:41.86, which is almost half a second faster than Donavan Brazier’s winning time in Doha five years earlier.
Cian McPhillips, who had difficulty keeping up with the initial pace, finished strongly to secure fourth place with a new Irish record time of 1:42.15.
Spain’s Mohamed Attaoui briefly found himself in a difficult position while making his move in the final stretch and finished in fifth place.
It will be remembered as one of the notable 800m races, with all eight competitors finishing in under 1:43.
Kenya are now only behind the USA in the medal table with six gold medals.
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