Why Emmanuel Wanyonyi is confident in bagging gold medal in Tokyo
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Reading Time: 3min | Tue. 22.04.25. | 18:06
This will be his third appearance at the World Championships having debuted in Oregon and mined silver in his second appearance in Budapest
Reigning Olympic 800 meters champion Emmanuel Wanyonyi has set his sights on clinching the 2025 World Athletics Championships title.
The championships will run betweenS unday, 13 to Sunday, 21 September in Tokyo.
The youngster is banking his hopes on the confidence and experience garnered over the years he has competed at the World Championships.
He debuted in the 2022 Oregon World Championships as a budding 17-year-old, finishing a promising fourth in the men's 800m.
He made the podium in the next edition of the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary, bagging a silver medal.
Still basking in the glory of his gold medal triumph at the 2024 Paris Olympics, Wanyonyi, who is oozing confidence, declared that his finest World Championships performance is still ahead of him.
“In Oregon, I was still young and learning the ropes. In Budapest, I gained invaluable experience. The silver medal I won in Budapest motivated me to go for the Olympic gold in Paris. I am now fired up for Tokyo,” Wanyonyi shared with Nation Sport.
At just 20 years old, the rising star is already being talked about in the same breath as 800m legend David Rudisha, whose world record of 1:40.91 has stood since the London 2012 Olympics.
Despite the comparison, Wanyonyi admitted that chasing records is a journey.
“People are asking whether I will attempt the world record this year, but I say that I will attempt to improve my personal best this year, and to fight for the world crown. One cannot just wake up one day and decide to go for the world record. It’s not impossible, but it takes good preparations and focus,” he revealed.
The youngster has already made huge strides toward that historic feat.
In August last year, he clocked 1:41.11 at the Lausanne Diamond League, tying with Kenyan-born Dane Wilson Kipketer for the second-fastest time in history behind Rudisha.
That performance followed his impressive gold-medal run in Paris, where he posted 1:41.19, reclaiming his spot as the third fastest man ever over the distance after briefly losing it to Algeria’s Djamel Sedjati.
Wanyonyi also made history off the track earlier this year by breaking the world road mile record at the Adizero Road to Records event in Germany, clocking 3:54.56 to erase American Hobbs Kessler’s previous mark.
With his past performances, it is no surprise that he is inspired by Rudisha’s legacy.
The two-time Olympic champion and former world junior gold medalist built up to his record-breaking run with a string of impressive performances between 2010 and 2012.
Wanyonyi appears to be following a similar trajectory.
The Tokyo World Championships could be the perfect stage for Wanyonyi to step further into greatness. While he remains cautious about any record talk, the ambition is crystal clear.
“I am not in a hurry to break the world record. If you look at what Rudisha did, he ran some good times before finally breaking the world record thrice. The best is yet to come,” he concluded.
