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: Friday, September 19th at 7:05 am ET on Peacock and USA

Final: Sunday, September 21st at 6:50 am ET on Peacock and CNBC

Top contenders: We’ll have more clarity on reigning World and Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen’s status for this event, since we’ll have seen how he looked in the 1500m first. He has not run a 5000m since the Paris Olympics, but he’s won the last three gold medals on offer in this event. Whether it’s a European Championship, World Championships or Olympics, Ingebrigtsen has proven to have the perfect blend of the speed and strength to dominate this event at those stages.

The clock hasn’t interested Ingebrigtsen as much in recent years, but the same can’t be said of the rest of the world. Tokyo will have four men entered who have run 12:45 or faster this year. Andreas Almgren of Sweden, someone who has trained with Ingebrigtsen in the past, leads the world with his 12:44.27 European record from the Stockholm Diamond League and placed third in the blanket finish at the Diamond League final in Zurich behind Frenchman Jimmy Gressier and American Grant Fisher over 3000m. All three of these guys will have a 10,000m on their legs to even the playing field for Ingebrigtsen after three hard 1500ms.

Fisher’s Olympic bronze medal at the Paris Olympics was a blessing and a curse. Those medals were well deserved for one of America’s best ever talents but they also raised the expectations for how we’ll define success in Tokyo. A medal here of any sort will be extremely hard to pull off. Back in February, Fisher looked like he could be the gold medal favorite with his 12:44.09 indoor 5000m world record and 7:22.91 indoor 3000m world record, but since then, he hasn’t been quite as dominant in unpaced races, including two runner-up finishes at USAs. 

Fisher’s compatriot Nico Young certainly has looked like he’s improved since 2024 and he’s contesting this event for the first time at the World Championships. He ran 12:45.27 to break the U.S. outdoor record at the Oslo DL and beat a strong field. That performance alone was enough to garner more eyes from the top competitors in the world.

Hagos Gebriwhet and Biniam Mehary maybe shouldn’t let their federation dictate their race plan since it’s kept Ethiopians the podium at the last three global championships. They own season’s bests of 12:46.82 and 12:45.93, respectively.

Dark horses: Let’s put the Olympic 1500m champion here. For some reason the field at USAs let Cole Hocker control the race from the front and no one was able to match his kick in the final stretch. He was adamant about attempting the double at the World Championships and was overlooked a bit leading into the race given Fisher, Young and Graham Blanks’s success leading into USAs. Yet, he got it done. Hocker said on The CITIUS MAG Podcast that he was more enticed to go for the 5000m since all the past 1500m greats have proven to be able to double and he believes he could be a threat in a 13:10ish race.