TOKYO: Even avid track fans might have checked their programs when that blur of red and green on the far outside started streaking to the lead with the finish line in sight.
This year’s out-of-nowhere winner of the men’s 1,500 meters hails from Portugal. It’s Isaac Nader, who ran five wide down the stretch Wednesday night to pull what can only be described as a stunner at world championships, even against a field that lost three of its top contenders long before the finish line.
Nader rallied from fifth to first over the last 100 meters to edge 2022 champion Jake Wightman of Britain, who also wasn’t expected to contend, by .02 seconds. The winning time: a leisurely 3 minutes, 34.10 seconds.
“There were 14 men in the final, and I thought it was possible to win,” Nader said. “I told myself before the race that I was either going to finish 14, or I was going to finish first.”
Kenya’s Reynold Cheruiyot finished third while the favorite, Niels Laros of The Netherlands, faded at the end and wound up fifth. Another top contender, 2023 world champ Josh Kerr, pulled up lame in the third lap and finished the race nearly 30 seconds off the pace.
The 26-year-old Nader came in ranked eighth in the world and had never placed in a major championship. He was a 50-1 longshot.
“It’s the same story every year in the 15,” Wightman said. “Whoever goes in the favorite always seems to have a bit too much of a target. I don’t think one person would have expected Nader to win that.”
Not since 2021, in this stadium, when Jakob Ingebrigtsen took Olympic gold, has this race gone to “form” — whatever that is — on the sport’s biggest stage.
In 2022, it was Wightman passing world-leading Ingebrigtsen and beating him to the line.
In 2023, Kerr did the same thing.
Last year, a battle of personalities and running styles between Kerr and Ingebrigtsen got upended when America’s Cole Hocker barged past them on the inside for the win.
Laros, the 20-year-old with the world’s fastest time this year, was considered the odds-on favorite even before Hocker got disqualified for jostling in the semifinals and Ingebrigtsen, who came to Tokyo off an Achilles injury, didn’t make it out of the opening heats.
When Kerr started limping, it left Wightman and 2019 champion Timothy Cheruiyot as the only two racers on left on the track with winning experience at the highest level.
Laros traded the lead with Timothy Cheruiyot over the first three laps but fell back and finished only one spot ahead of his placement at the Paris Games last year, where he was a bit player in a drama involving Kerr, Ingebrigtsen and Hocker.
“It’s not the first time I’m surprised in this championship about something that happened in the 15,” Laros said.
Nader’s biggest win up to now was in the Dream Mile in Oslo in June — a race that didn’t feature any of the top names in four-lap races.
That probably explained Nader’s look of pure shock when he looked up at the scoreboard and saw he was first, barely ahead of Wightman, who stumbled and hit the deck at the finish but came up short.
Asked to describe in Portuguese his feelings about coming from nowhere to become his country’s first winner in one of track’s most electric — and unpredictable — events, Nader said: “Inacreditável!“
Unbelievable!
Drama in pole vault and a 1-2 finish for the US
American pole vaulter Katie Moon had one last try to clear her season best and, with that, capture her third straight world title. She nailed it, clearing 4.90 meters (16 feet-3/4 inch) to snatch away the title from another American, Sandi Morris.
Moon’s chest brushed the bar on her way over and it wobbled back and forth, but didn’t fall.
“It definitely wasn’t an immediate moment of elation, because I wasn’t sure,” Moon said. “But I’d seen it settle enough that I knew it wasn’t coming down. I obviously would’ve loved to have cleared it without touching it, but I’ll take it.”
Moon has now collected four of the last five major titles — the only miss coming at the Paris Olympics where she took silver.
Morris, the only American woman to clear 5 meters outdoors, said this was a bit of a heartbreaker, but not a tragedy.
It’s was her fifth major silver medal — four at worlds and one at the 2016 Rio Olympics. She has never won a gold and, this time, finished second despite her own season-best — a 4.85-meter jump that led Moon to move the bar up and go for the win.
“It’s tough when I made ‘85,’ and we moved the bar up and it put pressure on everyone,” Morris said. “But I knew it wasn’t in the bag.”
Gout Gout and all the ‘big boys’ move on in the 200
The sprinters returned to the track for the 200-meter heats. For many of them — Noah Lyles, Kenny Bednarek, Letsile Tebogo — this felt routine.
For 17-year-old Gout Gout of Australia, anything but.
Gout, who has junior records to his name and is already drawing comparisons to Usain Bolt, used a high knee kick to finish third in his heat and advance to Thursday’s semifinals.
His run of 20.23 seconds was good enough to make it through. He will probably need to break 20 to run in the final; his two career sub-20 runs have been wind-aided.
“Obviously, I was a bit nervous. It’s a great experience being out here running against the big boys,” Gout said. “I’m excited for more.”
