Men’s 1500 metre final: A story of comebacks and missteps leads to unexpected champion

© Copyright – 2025 – Athletics Illustrated

The 2025 men’s 1500 metre final race at the 2025 Tokyo World Athletics Championships finished just about as unexpectedly as could be.

Jakob Ingebrigtsen from Norway, one of the pre-meet favourites to win or at least medal, was eliminated early. Apparently, he is injured. American Cole Hocker, the defending Olympic champion, was controversially disqualified for impeding a competitor when he split two athletes late on the home stretch during the heats.

WHAT A FINISH 🤯

🇵🇹's Isaac Nader comes out on top of a nail-bitting finish in the 1500m in 3:34.10 to win his first global title 💥

He clipped the finish line ahead of 2022 champ Jake Wightman and 🇰🇪's Reynold Chertuiyot 💪#WorldAthleticsChamps pic.twitter.com/08i4eZKNv0

— World Athletics (@WorldAthletics) September 17, 2025

On the start line of the final, all eyes were on Josh Kerr of Great Britain, who is the defending world champion from Budapest two years prior. He was also the silver medallist in Paris at the 2024 Olympic Games.

The Eugene World Athletics champion and fellow Brit Jake Wightman is on a comeback of notable proportions. There were tempered expectations about him as a factor.

Kerr became injured during the race. Prognosticators would have expected the injury to favour Niels Laros of the Netherlands. However, a lesser-known Isaac Nader ended up winning the gold medal in a time of 3:34.10.

Leaving a final race to tactics is a hard lesson learned in time. But this allowed Wightman to finish with a silver medal while clocking 3:34.12; leaning hard at the line, as did Nader.

The 26-year-old ran a sub-52-second final 400m, while those who followed were well over 52 seconds.

Nader is having the season of his life, having set seven national records from the 800m up to the 10km road race in four months.

The road to World silver's been tough 🙏

But Jake Wightman showed grit and rose to the occasion when the lights were brightest 💪 #NovunwGB&NI #WorldAthleticsChamps #WCHTokyo25 pic.twitter.com/24kTNVeqfW

— British Athletics (@BritAthletics) September 17, 2025

Personal bests

The Kenyans, who once wiped the track with the British singlet, were no longer expected to factor. But they did. Reynold Cheruiyot and Timothy Cheruiyot finished third and fourth, respectively. They displaced pre-race favourite Niels Laros from the Netherlands. They all finished in the 3:34s. Perhaps Laros should have made a race of it earlier.

Results