Mindful of placing 2nd to Marco Arop’s negative-split run to Worlds gold in ’23, Emmanuel Wanyonyi set a blistering pace from the gun and held off the Canadian by 0.01 as a record 7 went sub-1:43.
EXPECTATIONS RAN HIGH for a fast 2-lap final, with a number of very fast performances this season, including a Diamond League blazer across townat Stade Charléty that put 4 men in the all-time top 10. Favored Djamel Sedjati of Algeria said that he wanted a WR in the final and the other contenders braced themselves for anything. In the end, the race was indeed very fast, but the winner was Kenyan’s Emmanuel Wanyonyi, the Budapest silver medalist, who turned the tables on Canada’s world champion Marco Arop in the tightest of finishes.
The heats on Wednesday were mostly uneventful, with Wanyonyi running fastest at 1:44.64. All the expected folks got through, except for American Brandon Miller with a 1:46.34. In the next day’s repechage, he got his pass to the semis with a 1:44.21.
Sedjati won the first of Friday’s semis in 1:45.08 over Botswana’s Tshepiso Masalela (1:45.33), Miller bowing out with a 1:45.79 in 5th. In the second semi, Arop’s 1:45.05 topped France’s Gabriel Tual (1:45.16). Third-placer Wyclife Kinyamal of Kenya (1:45.29) was not, once the time-qualifying had shaken out, fast enough to advance. Nor was American Hobbs Kessler (6th in 1:46.20), doubling back from the 1500.
