Athletics-Kenya’s Wanyonyi adds world 800m title to Olympic gold

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By Mitch Phillips

TOKYO (Reuters) -Kenya’s Emmanuel Wanyonyi delivered a superb, high-speed, gun-to-tape victory – just – to win the world 800 metres gold in a championship record on Saturday in a glorious follow-up to his Olympic title last year.

The 21-year-old has been the form man in the event all season and, though he says he does not like front running, he did just that from the start.

Wanyonyi began to tire on the final straight but had just enough left in the legs to hold off Algeria’s Djamel Sedjati in a time of one minute 41.86 seconds.

Sedjati took silver in 1:41.90, an upgrade from bronze at the Paris Games, as Marco Arop, Canada’s defending champion and silver medallist at the Olympics, battled through strongly for bronze in 1:41.95.

“I didn’t take this race for granted. I really wanted to have a good race, a fast one, and it was,” Wanyonyi said.

“I ran a really fast first lap and it was a hard finish as well. That’s why I had a surprised face after the finish.

“Now I need to defend this title. I want to be a double world champion. Maybe I will start to think about the world record too. It may not happen now, but I also want to win (Olympic) gold in Los Angeles in 2028. That’s the biggest goal.”

Wanyonyi’s time was fractionally outside his season’s best and Sedjati and Arop now slot in as the second and third fastest of the year.

“Everything happened in the way I planned, except the gold medal, but I’m very happy and satisfied with this silver,” Sedjati said.

“I was very worried about my father. I had him on the phone yesterday and he told me that he was so stressed and that stressed me. But now I can tell him that everything is OK.”

Arop, 27 on Saturday, said: “I came up with some hardware on my birthday. I am happy to race again and feel 100%. It’s been a challenging last couple of months, but I got to where I needed to be.

“We went out so fast on the first lap I knew it would be a battle in the last 100m. I tried to hold on as hard as I could.

“Four medals in the last four major global championships is the kind of consistency we strive for.”

Ireland’s Cian McPhillips was an impressive fourth in an national record of 1:42.15 – the fifth-fastest of the year.

Briton Max Burgin’s personal best of 1:42.29 was good enough only for sixth, while Navasky Anderson ran a Jamaican national record 1:42.76 for seventh.

(Reporting by Mitch Phillips, Editing by Hugh Lawson and Ken Ferris)