Greetings from Tokyo! We’re only one day away from the 2025 World Athletics Championships starting Saturday, September 13th (the evening of Friday the 12th EDT).

In case you missed it, you can read our comprehensive sprint preview here as we move onto the events 800m on up. During the meet, we’ll bring you minute-by-minute coverage, daily live shows, and newsletters all along the way. You can find a full schedule with entries and live results here.

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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

Prelims: Saturday, September 13th at 5:05 am ET on Peacock and CNBC

Final: Monday, September 15th at 8:55 am ET on Peacock and USA

Top contenders: Soufiane El Bakkali has been at the top of this event since 2021 and now he’s looking for his fifth consecutive global championship gold. With one more, he’ll beat Ezekiel Kemboi’s record four golds in the event, but Kemboi’s three silver medals bring his total haul to seven. El Bakkali heads to Tokyo with the fastest time of the year, a 8:00.70 in Rabat.

Frederik Ruppert could put Germany on the podium for the first time since the Berlin Wall came down. (Hagen Melzer won silver in this event, representing East Germany at the 1987 World Championships.) He’s coming off becoming the first European to win the Diamond League trophy in Zurich and even gave the eight-minute barrier a scare, chasing El Bakkali in Rabat. 

We’ll have to see how loud the stadium gets if Ryuji Miura is in contention for a medal, since he’s the third-fastest man in the field with his 8:03:43, where he actually took it to El Bakkali in Monaco. Japan has yet to earn a medal in this event at the World Championships.

Kenyan fans may very well be just as excited about 17-year-old Edmund Serem as American fans are with Cooper Lutkenhaus, especially since Serem’s medal chances are probably better. Since this event was added to the World Championships in 1983, Kenya has won 32 medals, including 13 golds. More recently, however, they’ve only come away with bronze at each of the last three global championships. Serem (not to be confused with his older brother Amos Serem, who was 14th in last year’s Olympic final and won the Diamond League title) could be their next great talent. He’s run 8:04.00 for No. 4 on the year this year.

Dark horses: Lamecha Girma took a hard and scary fall in the Paris Olympic final, which forced him to take an extended break from running but he managed to return to action with an 8:07.01 win at the Paris Diamond League, his sole race of the year to date. He’s the world record holder, though, thanks to his 7:52.11 from 2023, and so if he can find any semblance of that form (if he’s healthy and simply among the athletes that the Ethiopian Athletics Federation decided to keep home to train), he could surprise. Yes, we put the world record holder as a dark horse.

We’re also putting last year’s Olympic silver medalist Kenneth Rooks in this category because he hasn’t put much on paper this year that screams he’s an Olympic silver medalist. When we had him on the podcast in August, he explained that after the Paris Olympics, he started thinking of ways to improve his strength and speed by racing more 5000m and 1500m races. The results have not been flashy but he still managed to win his third consecutive U.S. title. He’s buried among the entries since his season’s best is just 8:14.25 from his first steeplechase of the year back in May. We’ll see if he can reach the final and turn on that switch again to try and stun the field.

One good stat: Despite his widely talked about medal chances, Frederik Rupertt didn’t manage to win the German championship. That honor went instead to Karl Bebendorf (8:08.21 season’s best.), who prevailed in an extremely tactical affair 8:32.90 to 8:33.79. If anyone else looks poised to “pull a Rooks,” it may be Bebendorf.