By David Melly
March 26, 2025
Well, the indoor season is officially over. And it went out with a bang of sorts, as the World Indoor Championships took place last weekend in Nanjing, China.
As is so often the case with track and field, the event was met with mixed reviews. Fans were glad for the opportunity to send the best runners from national and regional championships into head-to-head races, and disappointed that so many of them skipped the meet entirely.
Ultimately, the criticism hanging over the whole event is that World Indoors isn’t a “real” global championships. While we don’t know the exact details of individual athletes’ contracts, it’s safe to say it isn’t compensated on the same level as an outdoor global championship in terms of prize money and bonuses, and when you throw in close proximity to the start of the more lucrative Grand Slam Track, plus a host location that offers a significant challenge for American, European, African, and Caribbean athletes alike, it was understandably tough to rustle up the same level of competition we saw in Paris last summer.
But let’s not dwell on the glass-half-empty view. A championship isn’t defined by the number of records that fall or the names on the marquee; the same number of gold medals get handed out either way. Much like Tinkerbell, World Indoors is as real as you believe it to be—the “you” in question being both the athletes and the fans.
It sure felt like a “real” Worlds for Kiwi Tomas Walsh, who landed on an incredible sixth straight World Indoor podium with his first gold since 2018, and found redemption for an uncharacteristically poor Olympics, where he got injured and failed to record a mark in the final. And in the most heartbreaking sense, it felt all too real for American Ronnie Baker, who at 31 years old has found himself back atop the U.S. 60-meter ranks only to pull a hamstring with mere steps remaining in the World final and end up outside the medals.
A gold medal served as a strong exclamation point on a career-defining season for Josh Hoey, who capped his undefeated winter and two American records with an 800m gold in 1:44.77. And for Ethiopian Gudaf Tsegay, winning her fourth global gold with a blistering, never-in-doubt display of front running in the 1500m final sent a clear message that, despite going home from a rough Paris Olympics empty-handed, she’s still a force to be reckoned with.
For the heavy favorites, the meet went according to form—mostly. Jakob Ingebrigtsen picked up his first and second World Indoor titles in the 3000m and 1500m, predictable given he’s the reigning Olympic 5000m champ and the top 1500m runner to make the trip. But he had to work a little harder than perhaps he may have expected to bring home his golds. In the 3000m final, Olympic 10,000m silver medalist and 7:21.28 3000m runner Berihu Aregawi nearly pulled off a sneak-attack early kick, and Ingebrigtsen had to hustle hard to get around the Ethiopian on the final turn. The 1500m victory came a little easier, but still there was a split-second moment where it seemed like “World Champion Luke Houser” was a legitimate possibility.
The 1500m served as a reminder that Jakob’s well-worn 1500m strategy of squeezing from the front is often a winning one indoors—it was clear that neither Houser nor silver medalist Neil Gourley was running much slower than Ingebrigtsen on the final lap but didn’t have the extra juice to get around both the Norwegian and eventual fourth placer Isaac Nader of Portugal. Given his preferred tactics, it’s a surprise that it took until 2025 for Ingebrigtsen to win a World Indoor gold… until you look at recent history and realize that Ingebrigtsen was injured in 2024, it took a world-record-shape Samuel Tefera to beat him in 2022, and the last indoor championship before that took place in 2018, when Ingebrigtsen was 17 years old.
There were plenty of other results where the end outcome didn’t quite capture the drama. If you read the deadline “World record holder Devynne Charlton defends her World Indoor title in the 60 meter hurdles,” you’d probably assume a Grant-Holloway-like dominance extended to the women’s event. And you’d have missed the best race of the entire weekend in the process. The women’s 60mH final was decided by the thinnest of margins from top to bottom: four one-hundredths of a second separated first and sixth place, and five one-thousandths of a second decided third, fourth, and fifth, as Ackera Nugent, Pia Skrzysowska, and Grace Stark were all credited with 7.74. And while Charlton won her second gold and third straight medal in a season’s best 7.72, her victory was arguably a surprise, as it was the first time all year she’d actually won a race of any kind. Talk about a perfect peak!
A Mondo Duplantis pole vault win was never really in doubt… except when it was. European champ and Olympic bronze medalist Emmanouil Karalis cleared a lifetime best 6.05 meters on the first attempt, and for the first time in recent memory, two athletes were headed up to 6.10 meters with a clean card. And then Mondo missed his first attempt! But alas, a few short minutes later all was back to normal as the legend-in-the-making soared over 6.10m, then 6.15m on his first attempt, and Karalis ultimately exhausted his upward ascent. But even mentally confronting the possibility that Duplantis might lose contesting a bar that high is unprecedented.
And not every favorite emerged unscathed. For the second World Indoor championship in a row, Olympic high jump champ Yaroslava Mahuchikh was beaten by an Australia rival—this time, by two, actually—as Nicola Olyslagers defended her title and was joined on the podium by teammate Eleanor Patterson. Mahuchikh, who shares a birthday with Jakob Ingebrigtsen but is one year younger, is getting better and better at 23 years old, but she’s not yet unbeatable. There might be something about World Indoors specifically that gets in her head, as last weekend’s loss was her first indoors or out since Glasgow.
Team USA had some impressive medal performances, including a sweep of the men’s 400m top-three, but perhaps the most interesting results came just off the podium. American fourth-placers included Whittni Morgan and Sam Gilman in the 3000m against decently strong international fields, suggesting that their ability to insert their names into the conversation domestically also means they’re knocking on the door of even bigger and better performances. And in the high jump, Eli Kosiba, fresh off a D2 NCAA title with Grand Valley State, nearly equalled his PB and only missed a medal on misses with his second-attempt 2.28m clearance. Kosiba elevated his game in a big way this indoor season, starting with a 5-centimeter PB of 2.30m in December and continuing through a runner-up finish at USAs and first national title, so keep an eye on the 22-year-old as he moves to the next phase of his jumping career.
Ultimately, World Indoors was a success when you grade it on the proper curve. The meet delivered a winning combination of satisfaction, surprises, and tension in a tight, carefully managed three-day window. When you account for its rescheduled date, the lingering post-Olympics hangover, and the large paychecks hovering on the horizon, World Athletics and its wards did a pretty darn good job.
Maybe, just maybe, when Torun ‘26 rolls around, a few more big stars will look at this weekend’s results and want in on a piece of the action.
David Melly
David began contributing to CITIUS in 2018, and quickly cemented himself as an integral part of the team thanks to his quick wit, hot takes, undying love for the sport and willingness to get yelled at online.
