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.

___________________

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.

___________________

Schedule + How To Watch

Heats: Sunday, September 14th at 6:25am ET on Peacock and CNBC

Semifinals: Tuesday, September 16th at 8:05am ET on Peacock and USA

Final: Thursday, September 18th at 9:24am ET on Peacock and USA

Top contenders: The women’s 400m may be one of the most hotly anticipated events of the whole week as a two-athlete rivalry turns into three. The Olympic 1-2 of Marileidy Paulino (Dominican Republic) and Salwa Eid Naser (Bahrain) will have to contend with a hurdles-less Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (USA), and while on paper McLaughlin-Levrone’s 48.74 is well off Paulino’s 48.14 and Naser’s 48.12, the U.S. champ’s true ceiling feels a lot higher given that she’s split sub-48 on relays and run 50 seconds with ten barriers in the mix.

Naser is the world leader at 48.67, but she may also have the biggest range of outcomes of the three as she’s run under 49 in both March and September but logged a few Ls to Paulino in between. Naser’s get-out-hard strategy is a high-risk, high-reward approach and fans have been accustomed to seeing the Bahraini come off the final turn with what looks like an insurmountable lead only to be walked down by the hard-closing Paulino more often than not.

Paulino, the reigning World champ as well, is astonishingly consistent, finishing first or second in every global championship since 2020– and the woman who beat her in 2021 and 2022, Shaunae Miller-Uibo, hasn’t quite been on the same level since. She’s probably got the highest floor of the Big Three and the question becomes more what the other two can throw at her.

McLaughlin-Levrone doesn’t have nearly as long a results sheet to judge from, but she’s the two-time U.S. champ in the event and has broken 49 seconds each of the last three seasons. As she races more often, she’ll hopefully be able to fine-tune her ability to measure effort without hurdles in the way to truly hone in on her upper limits in her secondary event, which could yield astonishing results if the hype comes to fruition.

Dark horses: While the trio above are the only sub-49 runners this year, two others on the entry list have PBs in the 48s: Paris bronze medalist Natalia Bukowiecka (née Kaczmarek, of Poland) and NACAC champ Nickisha Pryce (Jamaica). If they can round back into top form nicely at just the right time and someone in front of them goes out a little too hard and falters, the podium could open up quickly. Similarly, Americans Aaliyah Butler and Bella Whittaker will likely need someone else to underperform for one of them to land in the top three, but they’ve both been impressively consistent this season with marks in the low 49s.

Another runner who tends to be in the right place at the right time is Barbadian Sada Williams, the bronze medalist at the last two World championships, but her SB is only 50.65 and most recently she only finished eighth at the Lausanne DL, so she’ll need to step it up to be a factor for the third championship in a row.

One good stat: October 6th will mark 40 years since the last sub-48 performance was ever recorded, which also happens to be Marita Koch’s 47.60 world record. The closest anyone’s come since was Naser’s 48.14 PB, set en route to World gold in Doha in 2019.