It’s nearly here! The 2025 World Championships are two days away (…or three, depending on where you live relative to the international date line)! Regardless, if you’re reading this moments after it hits your inbox, the first events are a mere 62 hours away.

Over the next two weeks, 43 events will take place inside Tokyo’s National Stadium (plus a few marathons and race walks partially outside of it) to decide once and for all who the fastest/strongest/springiest athletes in the world are this year. Like all great championships, the beauty of Worlds is that everything that came before it gets tossed out the window alongside rabbits, Wavelights, and pre-established pecking orders, and medals are handed out based on one critical performance.

The CITIUS MAG team is rolling out full previews of every single event for your reading pleasure (busy week for your inbox!), but there’s still so much to unpack from a fanalytical perspective—a word we just made up that happens to perfectly describe this newsletter. Some events are intriguingly murky; others are looking like a one-athlete race against the clock. But even in the events with the biggest locks, something crazy can still happen…

First, the most predictable events on the docket – where one athlete’ victory is practically a foregone conclusion.

Women’s 400m hurdles: It’s brave of us to start out this newsletter with the bold assertion that there’s NO FREAKING WAY Femke Bol loses now that Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone has opted for the flat 400m… because the other woman who beat her in Paris, Anna Cockrell, is on the start line. With that asterisk out of the way, Bol is still the defending World champ and has the fastest PB in the field by 0.63 seconds, well ahead of Dalilah Muhammad’s 51.58. She’s also the only woman under 52 seconds this year and has eight of the ten fastest times run in 2025. One of those other marks is Sydney’s. The other belongs to Canadian Savannah Sutherland, who capped off her collegiate career by breaking SML’s NCAA record with a 52.46 run.

The Paris Olympic final was the confluence of a significant underperformance by Bol and a near-perfect day by Cockrell. The American’s silver-medal-winning run was a huge PB and remains her only lifetime sub-52 outing, compared with Bol, who’s run under 52 seven times but only ran 52.15 in the final. Bol was chasing after McLaughlin-Levrone and paid the price; she’ll have the luxury of setting the tone in this race.

Bol’s head-to-head records also tell a compelling story: Against Muhammad, she’s 7-2 and her last loss came in 2021. Against Cockrell, she’s 7-1—although that one was, of course, last year’s Olympic final. And she’s never lost to Sutherland, but has only raced her in two finals. It’s not an impossibility that Cockrell, Sutherland, or Muhammad upsets Bol, but that’s just what it’d be: an upset.

Men’s pole vault, women’s discus, women’s long jump: These events are grouped together not because they all take place inside the oval, but because in each one the favorite is riding an impressively long win streak. Mondo Duplantis, Valarie Allman, and Tara Davis-Woodhall all last lost a competition in 2023, although for the latter two, that loss came at the World Championships. Extra motivation for Allman and Davis-Woodhall to not get too comfortable atop their respective thrones! Both may be Olympic champions, but neither has a World gold, so the opportunity to expand their resume to new territory can’t be missed. For Mondo, the story will likely once again revert to how historically high he can push himself; but an outright loss to a competitor feels unfathomable.

Women’s 800m: Just one month ago, the women’s 800m would’ve been nowhere near the “most predictable” section, as reigning World champ Mary Moraa was having a rocky year, American record holder Athing Mu-Nikolayev missed the U.S. team, and Olympic champ Keely Hodgkinson kept pulling out of meets. But when Hodgkinson did return to her first 800m race in over a year, she did so without any lingering indication of her hamstring injury, and she ran the two fastest times in the world in back-to-back races, winning a pair of Diamond Leagues in 1:54.74 and 1:55.69.

The 800m is a notoriously unpredictable event, so predicting on the basis of two results is a bit of a swing, so if we may hedge, just a little... The meteoric rise of Swiss 21-year-old Audrey Werro could continue, as she improved her PB from 1:57.25 to 1:55.91 in two races and won the Diamond League final. But another 1+ second jump against a much more experienced racer feels unlikely, so if the final in Tokyo is a fast one, Hodgkinson is once again in the driver’s seat.

On the other end of the spectrum, some of the most exciting races on the calendar are those where things could go any of a dozen different directions:

Men’s 1500m: We’ve burned through a lot of newsletter ink on this event already, but it’s such a dramatic, closely-packed event that it’s worth spilling a bit more. The general consensus is that Niels Laros’s last month of racing has officially cemented his place as the favorite, but a gold medal is far from a sure thing as the 20-year-old—who’s never finished higher than sixth in a global final—takes on the current World champion (Josh Kerr), current Olympic champion (Cole Hocker), past World champion (Timothy Cheruiyot), past Olympic champion (Jakob Ingebrigtsen), and fastest man in the world this year (Azeddine Habz). Seven different men have won Diamond League races this year, and none of those seven are Hocker, Kerr, or Ingebrigtsen.

There’s a reason why the last eight global finals in this event have produced eight different winners. The competition keeps getting better and the margins between the top contenders is razor thin, coming down to who has the best positioning and the absolute best legs on the day. Laros is the safest bet based on recent form, but until the first few rounds of racing kick off, we have absolutely no idea what to expect from Ingebrigtsen, who hasn’t raced since indoors, and Hocker and Kerr, who’ve largely been absent from the late-summer circuit. The sheer number of unknowns only makes this already-exciting event more thrilling.

Men’s and women’s high hurdles: Olympic champs Masai Russell and Grant Holloway are both heading to Tokyo looking to follow up their banner 2024 with another statement victory, but there are question marks around both American hurdle stars. Russell took second to Nadine Visser in her most recent 100m hurdles race, a cold, rainy affair in Lausanne, but beyond that she’s had her most consistent year to date, including an American record run at Grand Slam: Miami back in May. But while Russell won the U.S. title, she’s only one for four in Diamond League races this season. Russell is clearly a gametime player in championships, but the competition is so strong in the 100m hurdles these days that even an A-minus day may not be enough with the likes of Grace Stark, Ackera Nugent, and Tobi Amusan right there, too.

Holloway, as we mentioned last week, has his work cut out for him thanks to Cordell Tinch’s ascendence to the top of the hurdling heap this season. But Tinch has a much shorter championship resume, with only one appearance at Worlds in 2023, where he didn’t make it out of the semifinals. If Holloway does pick up his fourth straight global title, it’ll be his most impressive yet as for once he’s not heading into Worlds with a season full of dominance under his belt. And it’s entirely possible that an American that isn’t either Tinch or Holloway wins, given that Ja’Kobe Tharp took the victory at USAs and Dylan Beard has beaten them each twice apiece this season.

Women’s 200m: With Olympic champ Gabby Thomas out of Worlds with an injury, the two clearest favorites in this one are Julien Alfred and Melissa Jefferson-Wooden. But both are generally known more to be 100-meter specialists—who’s leveled up to higher highs in the longer sprints? And what about World champ Shericka Jackson, who hasn’t exactly looked like herself this season? Could she be saving her best stuff for Tokyo? Alfred, the Olympic silver medalist, is probably the betting favorite here, but while her return to racing in the Diamond League 100m final went smoothly she also had a brief injury setback in August, which shouldn’t be entirely discounted.

Another true X factor is Olympic bronze medalist Brittany Brown, who finished fourth at USAs but has steadily raced her way into better and better shape since, culminating with a victory of her own at the DL final. If Alfred or Jefferson-Wooden falters, she’s the most consistent performer on their heels, and she’s got two global medals to prove it.

But there’s also a weird third thing: events where the top few finishers are nearly certain, but who ends up with gold couldn’t be less clear.

Women’s 5000m: Here, the reigning World champ and reigning Olympic champ are two of the most dominant athletes in history: Faith Kipyegon and Beatrice Chebet. They’re both world record holders, and they’re both likely untouchable in the first events on their calendar: the 1500m for Kipyegon and the 10,000m for Chebet. Chebet got the better of Kipyegon in Paris and seems to have only gotten better since, but let’s not forget that Kipyegon got in a bit of an argy-bargy with Gudaf Tsegay in that race that may have knocked her off her game. It’ll be a real treat to watch two of the best ever go at it, but who comes out on top is anyone’s guess.

Men’s 400m hurdles: Much like the 5000m, the reigning World champ and Olympic champ are highly likely to go 1-2: Karsten Warholm (also the world record holder) and Rai Benjamin. After finishing second to Benjamin in Paris last summer and a well-beaten third in Stockholm in June, some may have wondered if Warholm’s final victory over Benjamin had already taken place and the baton had truly been passed off. But Warholm came back from a short summer break with a vengeance, clocking a stunning 46.28 world lead in Poland. No one has ever run that fast outside of a global final before, so all of a sudden Benjamin’s favorite status felt a lot less certain.

At this point, it does seem like those two have managed to separate a tiny bit from their third musketeer, 2022 World champ Alison dos Santos, but dos Santos did beat Benjamin at the Prefontaine Classic so he can’t be counted out. One thing’s for sure: it would be crazy to see anyone else crack that podium without a fall or some other disaster.

Women’s 400m: Another event where the podium feels pre-set is the women’s 400m, where Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone’s inter-event transfer puts her on a collision course with Olympic champ Marileidy Paulino and world leader Salwa Eid Naser. McLaughlin-Levrone will need to elevate her game to truly contend with Paulino (48.17 PB) and Naser (48.14 PB), but that’s exciting news for anyone who wants to see SML’s true potential in her new(ish) event—and anyone who wants to see Sanya Richards-Ross’s 48.70 American record finally fall.

Naser has had the most variance in performance of the three, with sub-49 runs in both March and August but a few duds in between, usually in bad weather, but with warm temperatures forecast for Tokyo, it’s likely she’ll be on the higher end of her capabilities unless she goes out way too hard and fizzles (which does happen, too). By contrast, Paulino always seems to have the extra gear she needs at the end of races, and how McLaughlin-Levrone decides to approach pacing and racing against her two biggest threats to gold is a mystery heretofore unknown to everyone not named Bobby Kersee.

So whether you’re rooting for the favorite to dominate, hoping against hope for the big upset, or betting tricky odds on an unpredictable outcome, there will be a little something for every kind of fanalyst at this year’s World Championships. Just don’t get confused by all the time zone changes and miss your favorite event’s final.

For more of the top stories and analysis from the biggest stories in track and field from the past week, subscribe to The Lap Count newsletter for free. New edition every Wednesday morning at 6:00 a.m. ET.