How do you rank the unrankable?

This is an issue we wrestle with every year, whether it’s in the Bowerman voting, World Athletics awards, or the actual World Athletics ranking system: how do you compare and contrast athletes within one sport that’s actually really 20 different sports branded as “track and field?” It’s an inherently impossible task, which is why it’s so fun to try. (And then fight with the trolls who didn’t like our picks, thought we were too pro-American, not pro-American enough, too focused on times, not focused on the Diamond League, etc.)

Generally speaking, there are three big considerations that go into an athlete’s measure of track and field greatness: What did they achieve at their peak (PBs, world records, world leads), who did they beat (win streaks, head-to-heads), and did they win the events that mattered (championships, top-tier races)? Most of our favorite athletics stars take home the big bucks because they do two of the three very well. But very few pull of all three. There was only one athlete in the entire world this year who set a world record, completed an undefeated season, and won a World Championship, and he’s arguably one of the greatest athletes in the entire history of the sport. Everyone else fell just a little bit short of perfection in one way or another, but that just gives us the opportunity to pit the world-beaters against one another and make very subjective totally unimpeachable decisions about relative greatness.

So here’s one more ranking to sum up the year in track and field before we turn our sights to the future.

TLC’s top five male athletes of 2025:

1. Mondo Duplantis: That athlete we alluded to in the intro who hit the trifecta? Yeah, it was pretty obviously this guy. Because he didn’t lose a competition all year, he of course struck gold at World Indoors and World Outdoors, and in winning the latter, he raised his own world record bar to 6.30m. Unless you want to really use a metric that no one else takes seriously, there’s basically no way to slot Mondo Duplantis as anything other than the top track and field athlete of 2025.

2. Kishane Thompson: Here’s where we start having to make some judgement calls. Working against Thompson is the fact that two losses over 100m this year bookend his outdoor campaign, which means he wound up in silver position in Tokyo. However, he did run the fastest time in the world in 2025 (9.75) and tallied at least one win against every other top-tier short sprinter, including his countryman Oblique Seville, who took home the ‘W’ at Worlds. In an event that—on paper—lacked a consensus top dog coming into the season, Thompson came as close to dominance as was likely possible.

3. Noah Lyles: And here’s where we are likely to really ruffle some feathers. Lyles placed third in the 100m at Worlds, behind the two aforementioned Jamaicans. So what’s he doing in this placement? Well, despite what Paris’s podium might suggest and what Noah probably wishes, he’s just not a 100m specialist. And in the 200m, despite an injury-truncated campaign, Lyles was phenomenal. In that event, he went undefeated, secured his fourth World gold, and posted the fastest time of the year in 19.51. Given Lyles’s track record and penchant for running his mouth, few athletes in the sport enter the arena with a bigger target on their back—so credit is due when he delivers on his ample promise, and promises!

4. Ethan Katzberg: The gargantuan Canadian had himself a hell of a year, and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in the sport who would suggest anybody else had a better season in the men’s hammer. Katzberg’s 84.70m heave in Tokyo was over a meter clear of anybody else’s best throw in 2025, and—duh—was plenty good enough for him to win World gold. But Katzberg also finished second thrice this season: at two meets in Eastern Europe, Hungary’s Bence Halász got the better of him, and at Pre, American Rudy Winkler took him down.

5. Cordell Tinch: In the short hurdle sphere, nobody hit higher highs than Tinch: he ran the world lead in the 110mH (12.87), won the Diamond League Final, and took home gold in Tokyo. But his results sheet’s blemishes are more notable than any of the men ranked ahead of him. He only managed to place fourth at the U.S. Indoor Championships in the 60mH and he wasn’t the U.S. champ outdoors either. His worst placing in a final was fifth, and while it was at the first Grand Slam event, that’s still the sort of blot that’ll cost you on the Lap Count’s year-end rankings!

Honorable mentions: Mykolas Alekna (reset his own discus WR and won the DL final but lost both NCAAs and Worlds), Rai Benjamin (won Worlds in the 400H but was not the fastest man of the year), Emmanuel Wanyonyi (800m World and DL final champ but ran much slower than last year), Oblique Seville (World 100m champion but 1-2 against Thompson head-to-head this season)

TLC’s top five female athletes of 2025:

1. Melissa Jefferson-Wooden: 2025 was in nearly every imaginable way the year of MJW. Her 10.61 100m and 21.69 200m at Worlds resulted in two world leads and two gold medals. As the year progressed, it became abundantly clear that if anyone wanted to beat her come championship time, they’d need a perfect day and for her to be off her game. And yet, one non-relay loss on her card—a third-place finish in the 200m at GST Miami—stands between MJW and the full Mondo treatment. Otherwise, she ran the fastest non-FloJo 100m time in American history, and moved up to U.S. all-time No. 4 (behind FloJo, Gabby Thomas, and Marion Jones) in her secondary event, the 200m.

2. Beatrice Chebet: Chebet became the first woman to break 14 minutes in the 5000m, going 13:58.06 at Pre. On top of that, she took home World gold in both the 10,000m and 5000m. That’s one hell of a slate of accolades right there. But since we are really being picky here, Chebet has something Jefferson-Wooden doesn’t: two on-track losses—a third-place showing at her national championship 10,000m and a runner-up finish in the 1500m at the Silesia Diamond League. Now, we’d love to give her credit for racing an “off distance,” but that’s not how these rankings work, folks. Undoubtedly a great year for Chebet… but this is a game of inches!

3. Valarie Allman: Again, here is where things get tricky. Allman won every competition she entered – for the second season in a row. With what amounts to a perfect season, placing wise, and having thrown the world lead when she uncorked at 73.52m American record at the Ramona wind tunnel, why is she only our third-ranked athlete of the year? For the same reason field athletes tend to wind up further down every ranking than their track-based peers: MJW and Chebet were exceptional over multiple events, and in the case of Chebet, set a world record. Allman had an almost perfect year. But if she wants to claim the top honor in the sport—the number one spot in a weekly newsletter’s end-of-year athlete rankings—she’ll have to do all that plus set a world record next year.

4. Tara Davis-Woodhall: Poor Tara Davis-Woodhall, destined for the Valarie Allman treatment. Davis-Woodhall went undefeated on the year, which of course means she won the U.S. Championships and Worlds. On two separate occasions she leapt 7.13m—the world lead—and she hasn’t lost a long jump competition since the 2023 World Championships in Budapest. The only real “knock” against her otherwise unimpeachable 2025 campaign is that she didn’t set records or venture outside her primary event.

5. Faith Kipyegon: How in the world does Faith Kipyegon—the GOAT!—wind up in the number five spot? Two reasons. One, she’s raised the bar so astronomically high for herself that it makes things like a world record and a gold medal a little less special. And second, she didn’t quite pull off a clean racing card. While we certainly could applaud Kipyegon for stepping up to the 5000m at Worlds, knowing full well she’d face stiff competition from her compatriot who’s the world record holder and Olympic in the event, a loss is a loss. So despite setting a real world record in the 1500m, asterisk-edly running faster than any woman in history for the full mile, and winning her fourth World gold over 1500m, this is where she lands.

Honorable mentions: Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (World 400m champ and American record, but didn’t bother racing much in her best event), Julien Alfred (second-best sprinter in the world this year but unfortunately beat by MJW every time), Faith Cherotich (steeplechase World and DL champ but not the fastest woman this year)

There you have it. Consider this rankings list our holiday gift to you: something to fight about with your relatives over the dinner table that doesn’t involve politics or religion. If our choice of top Jamaican enrages you, bring it up while angrily waving a glass of wine. If you think we did a good job, print out a copy and defiantly slam it down on the coffee table at halftime of a football game and explain to your Sydney-pilled uncle why she doesn’t make the cut. ‘Tis the season!

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.