Lilian Odira's meteoric rise from obscurity to gold at World Championships
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Reading Time: 3min | Tue. 23.09.25. | 21:27
She set an almost two-second personal best and took down the oldest championship record in the book, the 42-year-old mark of 1:54.68 set by Czech athlete Jarmila Kratochvilova in 1983
Lilian Odira's meteoric rise to the top of the world has seen her become the fourth Kenyan woman to win the women's 800m world title, following in the footsteps of pioneer Janeth Jepkosgei (2007), Eunice Sum (2013), and outgoing champion Mary Moraa (2023).
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Odira, a largely unknown athlete before the Tokyo event, beat a loaded field for gold, surging past Great Britain’s Georgia Hunter Bell and Kelly Hodgkinson in the final metres, after Moraa did the dirty work in the opening 400m, to secure Kenya's seventh gold in the 2025 edition.
Coached by Jacinta Murigura, she set an almost two-second personal best and took down the oldest championship record in the book, the 42-year-old mark of 1:54.68 set by Czech athlete Jarmila Kratochvilova in 1983.
"I didn't have any expectations; I was just following the pace of the race. I managed to have the most powerful finish, and I got lucky to be going home with a gold medal.
This medal means the world to me. It is for my sons, they are four and two. They are my motivation," she said after the race.
The 26-year-old shot to the limelight when she won last year's Athletics Kenya (AK) National Championships at the Ulinzi Sports Complex, clocking 2:02.21 for the victory.
The win came barely a month after she had failed to finish at the Kip Keino Classic.
She then won the women’s 800m at the national trials for the Paris Olympics, earning a direct ticket to the quadrennial competition.
Before heading to Paris, however, she won her first career medal in July, clocking 2:00.36 to bag silver at the African Championships in Douala, Cameroon.
In Paris, she finished fourth in the semis, clocking 1:58.53 to miss out on the final. Odira reveals that the painful exit opened the door to another chapter in her career.
“My season has been amazing. From the Olympics, we went back to the drawing board with my coach, and we saw it was very possible because I got a PB in Paris.
We sat down and planned the season well, starting with a lot of cross-country meetings as part of the build-up," she explained.
At the World Indoor Championships, held in China in March, she also failed to go past the semis, but the lessons she picked proved crucial for her Tokyo outing.
“I fell during the World Indoor semis but took that as a learning curve, and I had to be patient enough and continue planning for the World Championships," the Kip Keino Classic reigning champion admitted, adding that victory in Tokyo was a culmination of hard work and strategic team planning during the race.
