What to Watch on Day 2

Timetable | Streaming Info

Finals: Women’s 20k Racewalk, Women’s Long Jump, Men’s Hammer Throw, Heptathlon, Men’s 10,000m, Men’s 100m

The action continues in Budapest tomorrow, where the women’s 100-meter runners open up their championships and the men’s 100m final crowns a new World’s Fastest Man. 2022 World champ Fred Kerley will be defending his title against a field that includes Olympic champ Marcell Jacobs, 2019 World champ Christian Coleman, and reigning 200m champ Noah Lyles.

Charismatic U.S. star Tara Davis-Woodhall goes for gold in the women’s long jump final and the three fastest men’s 400-meter hurdlers in history open up their heats. Anna Hall looks to upgrade her bronze medal from 2022 to silver, or even gold, in the heptathlon. And we’ll get to see if the men’s 10,000m final can produce the same fireworks as the women, putting a talented U.S. team led by Woody Kincaid up against some of the best in history.

The morning track action kicks off in the wee hours (if you’re in the U.S.), with 400m heats starting at 3:35am E.T., and the “afternoon” session begins with the men’s 100m semis at 10:35 am E.T.. Beat the Sunday scaries with some high-quality track and field!

Race of the Day: Women’s 10,000m

Drama. Delight. Devastation. The women’s 10,000-meter final may have started off with a slow pace and a few yawns, but the final laps delivered a full race’s worth of hype as the Ethiopian team of Gudaf Tsegay, Letesenbet Gidey, and Ejgayehu Taye employed team tactics to ratchet up the tempo before a blistering final lap. It paid off big time for the trio, who were rewarded with the first 1-2-3 sweep of the championships, led by Tsegay and her 59.01 final 400 meters. If you just looked at the results, you’d think that Tsegay, the 2022 World 5000m champion with 3:53 1500m speed, walked away with this one, but that doesn’t tell nearly the whole story.

With a lap to go, it was American Alicia Monson who was swinging wide on the wings of the leaders (Gidey, the world record holder and reigning world champion in the event, took the pack into the last 400m), but she couldn’t muster the top-end speed to get to the front. Then, the indomitable Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands, who’d contested the first round of the women’s 1500m less than seven hours earlier, made her bid for gold, and headed around the final turn, it seemed that she would hold off the hard-charging Tsegay. But it turned out that her legs only had around 9,960 meters of run in them, as Hassan stumbled, then fell, in a desperate attempt to hold off her rival, and Tsegay emerged victorious. There was no meaningful physical contact between the two, so a protest or disqualification was out of the question, and the Dutch star will have to give it another go in the 1500m and/or the 5000m, where she’s taking another shot at the “Hassanathon” triple she attempted at the Olympics in Tokyo. Monson’s eventual 5th-place finish was the highest by an American since Emily Infeld’s bronze medal in 2015, and she’ll be back in action in a few days in the 5000m as well.

Athlete of the Day: Ryan Crouser

Even before this meet, it was easy to call Ryan Crouser the Michael Jordan of the shot put for his world-dominating prowess and long list of global titles. The world record holder indoors and outdoors has to be considered the Greatest of All Time even if he retired tomorrow, but as his new technique, the “Crouser slide,” continues to pay dividends and yield world records, his business is far from finished.

But this time, the Jordan comparisons stemmed from the Oregonian’s ability to persevere while competing through health challenges. Crouser announced this weekend he’d been diagnosed with two blood clots in his left leg, and was competing with the sign-off of Team USA medical staff and a few doses of blood thinners. In the morning session, he laid down an easy auto-qualifier on his first attempt, guaranteeing his spot in the final without much effort, and once he really got going, it was clear that even a relatively serious medical issue couldn’t prevent greatness. Crouser recorded the three longest throws of the competition, closing with a championship record of 23.51m, the second farthest throw in history (behind, of course, himself). A truly Herculean performance.

Photo of the Day: Drama in the Mixed 4x400m

Justin Britton captured the dramatic final strides of the mixed-gender 4x400m final, where Femke Bol of the Netherlands appeared to have the gold medal in hand before a stumble in the final steps of the race changed everything. Team USA ended up taking the win in a world-record time of 3:08.80.

Social Moment to Remember

3x U.S. steeplechase champ Hillary Bor has high hopes for the next generation, encouraging 2023 U.S champ Kenneth Rooks to shoot for the podium.