World Athletics Championships 2025: 400m finals, 200m semis and more – live | World Athletics Championships

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Off we go in the first heat of the women’s 5000m. Tanaka of Japan, who didn’t make the 1500m final, goes to the front, her teammate Yamamoto behind her.

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Jake Wightman had a good night last evening, a bit of karaoke and sake, he confesses to BBC. He’s checked the last lap to make sure he did all he could to win; someone else was better on the day, he says.

I guess he might wonder if he’d waited just five more metres before kicking, because he was so close to seeing it out. But, as he explains, he’s come back from so many injuries and stayed near the front the whole race in the knowledge he’d eventually strike; he did, and he got his silver.

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Updated at 06.05 EDT

The women’s 5000m heats will soon be upon us. Final qualification is generous – the first eight in each heat go through – with Beatrice Chebet in the first and Faith Kipyegon in the second. For GB, Melissa Courtney-Bryant and Hannah Nuttall go in the first and Innes Fitzgerald the second.

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Updated at 06.06 EDT

The more I think about it, the more the 1991 worlds are up there as the best meet of my lifetime. The greatest men’s 100m and long jump ever, a great finish in the men’s 400m, Michael Johnson and Noureddine Morceli also taking golds; then Katrin Krabbe doing the sprint double and the great Marie-Jose Perec taking the 400m. Then, three weeks later, Nevermind was released.

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Steve Cram just joked that it’s freezing tonight, only 28 degrees, so many the athletes will run in tracksuits. That put me in mind of Derartu Tulu, who won the 10,000m at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics with a t-shirt under her vest, as others – Liz McColgan in particular – wilted in the heat.

And that put me in mind of the women’s 10,000 at the 1991 Tokyo world championships, Liz McColgan destroying the field in the heat.

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Schedule of events

Photograph: World AthleticsShare

The best thing I’ve seen today – so far.

Photograph: The TimesShare

Preamble

こんにちは – kon’nichiwa – and welcome to the World Athletics Championships – night six!

And it’s another stacked session. We’ve various qualifying to enjoy – women’s 5000m featuring Faith Kipyegon, plus high jump and 800m, featuring Kelly Hodgkinson and Georgia Hunter Bell – along with a pair of field finals – men’s javelin, women’s triple jump. But it’s the sprints that’ll really get us going.

First, we’ve the semi-finals of the women’s 2o0m, as Sherickah Jackson of Jamaica takes on a powerful American contingent led by Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, the surging 100m champion. Meantime, in the men’s competition, we get another look at Gout Gout, while Noah Lyles, Letsile Tebogo and Kenny Bednarek, the medal favourites, jostle for position. So far, so tantalising.

Then, after the semis of what promises to be an extremely stressful set of men’s 800m semis, just two from each heat to qualify, we’ve both 400m finals. First go the men, with Botswana’s Collen Kebinatshipi having set down a marker out of nowhere, running a world-leading time in the previous round. He had plenty left at the end, too, while South Africa’s Zakithi Nene looks equal parts graceful and strong.

But it’s the women’s 400m for which we’re really waiting, the big three way front of the rest. Mariledy Paulino, the Dominican Olympic champion, fancies herself and rightly so, but Salwa Eid Naser of Bahrain have been more impressive so far, her PB of 48.14 also the fastest in the field.

Problem being, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone is a genius, having moved across from the 400m hurdles for the challenge and looking like she’s been running flat all her life. She was spectacularly good in the semis, devastating her personal best by half a second while barely seeming to make contact with the track, and if she gets it going today, Marita Koch’s world record of 47.60 – one of the oldest in the book, set in 1985 – is under threat. The race may be her against the others, but it may also be her against the clock.

Action: 7.05pm local, 11.05am BST.

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Updated at 05.45 EDT