It wouldn’t be the 2025 World Championships if it didn’t end with a little drama.

The theme of this year’s Throwdown in Tokyo has been “expect the unexpected,” and the last day of Worlds ended with one final plot twist via the weather gods. Just before the 4×400m final, the skies suddenly opened up, dumping buckets of rain into the middle of the National Stadium and soaking every single athlete inside lane 6. The discus got delayed for weather, but the track events soldiered on, undeterred by the elements.

The final day of competition served as a national victory lap for Team USA, who took three of four relay titles plus a somewhat-surprise 5000m gold thanks to Cole Hocker’s lethal kick. When the books closed on Tokyo ‘25, the Americans took home a record-breaking 16 golds and dominated the medal table with 26 total.

Even in one of the few finals without an American medalist, Sage Hurta-Klecker’s fifth-place 1:55.89 run in the 800m was still a breakout performance placing her third on the U.S. all-time list. Ahead of her, Team GB took two medals thanks to Georgia Hunter Bell’s 1:54.90 and Keely Hodgkinson’s 1:54.91, but the biggest surprise was Kenyan Lilian Odira, who’s knocked four seconds off her best this year, kicking her way to a 1:54.62 victory.

After all the talk of changing relay coaches, drama in the 4×400m, handoff troubles, and more, the American teams executed more or less flawlessly in every event. The women’s 4×100m team had the great advantage of starting with Melissa Jefferson-Wooden and ending with Sha’Carri Richardson, but perhaps the most crucial element was Tee Tee Terry’s second-leg carry, as she put distance on Jamaica’s Tia Clayton and secured two of three handoffs smoothly. Terry is the only American to run on the last three 4×100m teams, and all three have won gold.

The men shook off all the bad juju of 4×100ms past to get the stick around cleanly, and with no Jamaica in the mix after their disastrous qualifying round, Noah Lyles was able to successfully hold off Canada’s Andre De Grasse to take his second gold and third total medal in a world-leading 37.29. Lyles is up to 13 global medals with plenty more fast running to come, and he’ll likely spend the next few years steadily climbing the all-time lists.

The women’s 4×400m was the least rainy of the events, with things briefly slowing to a drizzle to allow the U.S. team anchored by Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone’s 47.8 split to clock a dominant 3:16.61 win, the sixth-fastest relay performance of all time. The unsung hero of this one was second leg Lynna Irby-Jackson, who separated from the field with a fantastic 48.7 run to give the back half of the relay plenty of breathing room.

The only non-gold performance was the men’s 4×400m, fielding an entirely new team from the morning session run-off that saw the Americans advance to the final with the last spot. Vernon Norwood, Jacory Patterson, Kaleb McRae, and Rai Benjamin are no “B” team, but this year, Botswana was too good to beat with three 400m finalists plus Letsile Tebogo. The Olympic silver medalists turned the tables on the Americans in this one, with Busang Kebinatshipi getting his second gold of the weekend by outkicking Benjamin in the last 50 meters.

Get your final fix of the gang on the last live show of the Championships, as well as one last Good Morning Track and Field. You can also catch up with all our athlete interviews over on the CITIUS MAG YouTube channel (309 total over nine days!) and subscribe to see even more great content from the postseason.

Race Of The Day: Men’s 4×400m

U.S. vs. Botswana is turning into an epic 400m rivalry, with the two nations swapping 1-2 positions from last year’s Olympics. The Americans have the experience and the depth, successfully replacing all four of their relay legs between the prelim and the final, but the Botswanans have the rising talent: Busang Kebinatshipi is 21 years old, Letsile Tebogo is 22, and they now have eight global medals between them.

The other runners who made a splash (literally) was Zakithi Nene, who only finished fifth in the final but anchored South Africa to a bronze medal that was nearly silver, as they finished only 0.002 seconds back of the U.S. team and were both credited with a 2:57.83. And he only had a chance to contend for medals because world record holder Wayde van Niekerk, who has focused on the 200m lately but ran the third 400m leg for the team, split an epic 43.2 to bring South Africa back into the mix.

More than anything else, it’s great to see the Americans face as serious challenge in an event they have historically dominated. Everybody loves a close race; nobody loves a blowout. Keeping guys like Rai Benjamin, who already have a crowded medal shelf, with something to aim for in the future will keep things interesting for years to come.

Athlete Of The Day: Cole Hocker

Whether you believe Cole Hocker’s disqualification in the 1500m semifinal was justified or not, the fact remains that it was a disappointment to not see him contending alongside Isaac Nader and Jake Wightman for the medals in the final.

So when the bell rang for the last lap of the 5000m and there was still a large pack jockeying for position, all eyes were on Hocker — back in 12th place with 400m to go — to see if his legendary closing speed and tactical prowess would deliver a gold medal after all. This time, instead of defending his position on the rail with all his might, he was swinging wide and coming up from behind, giving himself the perfect slingshot to overhaul Biniam Mehary, Jimmy Gressier, and Isaac Kimeli to claim his first World title in his secondary event in 12:58.30 thanks to a 52.6 last lap.

Hocker’s laserlike focus on championship season can make him a somewhat frustrating athlete to follow during the year, as he races infrequently and is confident in his training cycle even when early-season results don’t add up. But he’s shown time and again that he’s among the best in the world — if not the best in the middle-distance ranks, at sharpening his form to a peak at just the right time. In a sport where hardware is prized above all else, Hocker is playing the game exactly right and now has a second gold medal to prove it.

Photo Of The Day

This shot of the Dutch 4×400m team by Justin Britton shows just how rainy it really was during the final track session in Tokyo’s National Stadium.

Social Moment Of The Day

Fans around the world showed their appreciation and admiration online for the great Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, who ends her professional career with one last 4×100m medal (her 25th World/Olympic medal overall), concluding two decades of excellence that began at World Juniors back in 2022 and included three Olympic titles, 10 World titles, and the third-fastest 100m of all time.