It’s nearly time for the Big Show in Tokyo! The CITIUS MAG crew is flying halfway across the globe to bring you the best of track and field from Japan starting Saturday, September 13th—or Friday the 12th if you’re living on the American side of the International Date Line.

There’s plenty of running, jumping, and throwing on tap for the 2025 World Athletics Championships, and we’ll have minute-by-minute coverage and daily live shows and newsletters all along the way. You can find a full schedule with entries and live results here. To kick things off, we’re giving you event-by-event previews of every competition on tap for Tokyo so you head into the weekend with all the latest insight and analysis.

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How to keep up with all of CITIUS MAG’s extensive coverage of the World Championships – powered by ASICS:

• 🎥 CHAMPS CHATS - We will be streaming our post-race show live on YouTube at the conclusion of every evening session in Tokyo (AM in America) featuring Chris Chavez, Eric Jenkins, Anderson Emerole, Paul Hof-Mahoney and more from the CITIUS MAG team.
• 🎧 CHAMPS CHATS | Will immediately be available to stream, download and listen as a podcast on Apple Podcasts + Spotify or wherever you get your shows on The CITIUS MAG Podcast feed. Exclusive interviews with athletes will also be published as podcasts.
• 🎧 We will have episodes of Off The Rails live from Tokyo | Apple Podcasts + Spotify
• 📬 Daily newsletters, so be sure you’re subscribed to the CITIUS MAG Newsletter
• 🎦 Post-race interviews on the CITIUS MAG YouTube channel.
• 📲 Follow along for all updates, news, results and more on X and Instagram.
• 📆 Bookmark our full schedule of events here.
• 🏃 If you’re in Tokyo, join us for group runs with Asics on Sept. 12th and Sept. 19th. Details here.

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Schedule + How To Watch

Heats: Wednesday, September 17th at 7:15am ET on Peacock and USA

Semifinals: Thursday, September 18th at 8:02am ET on Peacock and USA

Final: Friday, September 19th at 9:06am ET on Peacock and USA

Top contenders: This event will likely be defined by two fierce rivalries, both of which involve three-time defending champ Noah Lyles. Lyles was denied gold in Paris last year, partly due to coming down with an ill-timed case of COVID-19… but more due to the performances of Letsile Tebogo and Kenny Bednarek. Tebogo and Bednarek will once again be his biggest threats in Tokyo, but Lyles has turned the tables on them so far this season, winning two matchups against Tebogo over 200m this summer and defeating Bednarek 19.63 to 19.67 at USAs. His most recent matchup against Tebogo was decided by an even narrower margin, 19.74 to 19.76, so just because Lyles is undefeated on the year, he can’t sit too comfortably on his laurels.

If anyone plays spoiler to the three men from the Paris podium, the most likely candidate will be 21-year-old Jamaican Bryan Levell. Levell didn’t make it out of the semifinal last year and only had a 19.97 PB heading into this season, but then he ran a wind-aided 19.79 at the Racers Grand Prix in June, won the Jamaican Trials, and finally popped TF off at the Hungarian Grand Prix, running 19.69 into a small headwind to land at #3 on the world list this season. He’s a less proven commodity, but it’s clear that the talent is there if he can bring his best stuff to the final.

Dark horses: Team USA has another pair of strong contenders for medals should one or more of its Big Two falter in Courtney Lindsey and Robert Gregory. Lindsey didn’t make the final in 2023, his only other individual championship appearance to date, but he had an awesome weekend at USAs, making the team in both the 100m and 200m. His post-USAs races have left something to be desired, but under the guidance of coach Dennis Mitchell he can’t be discounted to factor into the Worlds picture.

Dominican Alexander Ogando has run well on the Diamond League circuit this year and finished fifth in the final in Paris last summer, and after putting two Zimbabwean runners in the final last year as well, Tapiwanashe Makarawu and Makanakaishe Charamba will want to finish higher than sixth. And of course, the presence of 17-year-old Aussie sprint phenom Gout Gout in his first senior World Championship will surely elicit all sorts of scrutiny and Usain Bolt comparisons.

One good stat: The last time someone not named Noah Lyles won this event, there were actually no Americans at all on the podium, as Turkey’s Ramil Guliyev took the victory in 2017 ahead of South African Wayde van Niekerk and Trinidadian Jereem Richards.