26.2 miles decided by .03 seconds

The marathon World Championship was incredible for everyone except the guy who lost by 0.3 seconds. PLUS wild wrestling comebacks, and stone-skimming CONTROVERSY.

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It’s not a marathon, it’s a sprint. But it’s also a marathon

If I ran a 26.2-mile race and lost by .03 seconds I would collapse on the track and never get up. They’d have to run the rest of the races around me. They’d need the giant shot put guys to pick me up and throw me off the track.

At the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, the men’s marathon came down to an impossibly rare photo finish. Tanzania’s Alphonce Simbu and Germany’s Amanal Petros entered the stadium just a few meters apart after running for two hours through the streets of Tokyo. Petros tried to kick down the home stretch but was completely out of gas, and Simbu ran him down and nipped him at the finish line.

• If you search “marathon photo finish,” you’ll mainly find photo services that take pictures of recreational runners as they cross the finish line. Marathons are sometimes close, but rarely do you need the camera to tell you who won. For example, I got all worked up about Sifan Hassan sprinting to win last year’s Olympic marathon, but that was a two-second victory; it was clear that Hassan won. The Berlin Marathon claims on YouTube that it had a “photo finish” in 2019, but the race was actually decided by eight seconds … which is still reasonably close by marathon standards!

• The women’s marathon at the 2025 World Athletics Championships was also decided by two seconds, with Kenya’s Peres Jepchirchir wining a sprint to the line.

  You’ve gotta feel for Ethiopia’s Tigst Assefa, who finished second here and at the Paris Olympics by a combined four seconds.

• I’m such an idiot because part of me wondered whether the tape being held up by the two volunteers was the actual finish line. No, dummy. It’s the painted line on the ground. I needed a football announcer to remind me the yellow first down line is unofficial.

• Simbu might have won more convincingly, but he almost made an incorrect turn after entering the stadium, veering right for a few seconds before redirecting onto the correct path. (You can see it happen here.) This is why I always put my destination into Waze even if I’m really confident I know how to get there.

• This has to be the most unexpected podium in marathon history. Tanzania had never won an event at the World Athletics Championships (and still has yet to win gold at the Olympics) before Simbu crossed the finish line, Italy had never medaled in marathon, and Germany had never medaled in any running event. So even the guy who lost a marathon by a photo finish had something to feel pretty good about.

• I wouldn’t feel good, though. I’d be on the ground, permanently.

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Clearing some hurdles. METAPHORICAL HURDLES, FOLKS

The marathon was the best race of the World Athletics Championships, but the hurdles brought us the best story. American Cordell Tinch won gold in the 110m hurdles:

• Coming out of high school, Tinch initially committed to Minnesota to play football and run track, but quit before his freshman season because the burden of playing both sports was too high. (A possible villain in this story: P.J. Fleck.) He then transferred to Kansas, where he ran track for two years, but had eligibility issues apparently stemming from his transfer.

• Tinch quit track around the time of the pandemic. He took work at a cable company, a cell phone store, and a toilet paper factory. NBC Sports tracked down one of his managers, who recalled that he only vaguely knew that Tinch did track and field.

• After three years away from competitive athletics, Tinch joined the roster at Division II Pittsburg State in 2023. (Not a typo. Go Gorillas!) He won the Division II championships in hurdles, high jump, and long jump, and started posting some of the best times in the world, eventually setting the all-division NCAA record in the 110m hurdles. Tinch was even listed as a candidate to win the Bowerman (the track Heisman) despite competing at a lower level.

• Tinch went pro, tried out for the 2024 Olympics and … finished fourth at Team USA trials, where only the top three got to go to Paris.

• Tinch is a reminder that you can achieve anything if you never give up. And even, in some instances, if you do give up for an extended period of time.

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Mat Madness!

In my experience covering wrestling, the matches go one of two ways: The bigger, stronger, more skilled wrestler slowly wrings the life out of their opponent, or the absolute wildest thing you’ve ever seen happens. At the World Wrestling Championships, we got comebacks, we got buzzer beaters, and we got four American gold medals (and counting!)

• In 97 kg men’s freestyle, American Trent Hidlay came back from a 10-2 deficit in the first period to win the gold medal over Russian Amanula Gadzhimagomedov.

• Hidlay’s comeback is kind of like a team coming back from a 30-point deficit in basketball or football, but even more notable because wrestling has a mercy rule. Whenever a wrestler leads by 10 points, the match automatically ends. (It’s 15 points in the NCAA, which is less merciful.) Hidlay wasn’t just losing badly; he was one takedown away from the match being over.

• Hidlay gave an alarming — and alarmingly accurate — quote about his ability to bounce back after winning the match: “I think the matches I’m wrestling right now, being able to respond after giving up the first takedown, giving up another takedown, are things I wasn’t able to do in the past … there’s very few humans on this Earth that can go six minutes with me. You’re going to have to kill me out there. I really think that. You’re going to have to really take yourself to a dark place to be able to come out on the scoreboard against me.”

In the 57 kg women’s freestyle match, we didn’t just have a wrestling comeback … WE HAD A WRESTLING BUZZER BEATER! Helen Maroulis won her fourth world championship on a two-point takedown with five seconds left to beat North Korea’s Son Il-sim, turning a 2-1 deficit into a 3-2 win:

• So we’ve got “Huge championship comeback against Bearded Russian Guy” and “last-second flip to turn defeat into victory in championship match against North Korea.” You could pitch that to WWE creative right now!

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Quick Hits

• At least three people sent me the story about the cheating scandal at the World Stone-Skimming Championship. Everybody is overlooking the real story: THAT AN AMERICAN WON FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER. WOOOOOOOOOO USA #1, OUR STONES MAY SKIP BUT THESE COLORS DON’T RUN

• The United States beat Samoa in the fifth-place game at the World Rugby Pacific Nations Cup, which sounds like the least interesting thing you’ve ever heard until I point out that THAT MATCH WAS A QUALIFIER FOR THE 2027 RUGBY WORLD CUP WOOOOOOOO MORE LOW STAKES JINGOISM BABYYYYY WOOOOOO

• Mondo Duplantis once again broke the pole vaulting world record by .01 meters, and once again it was captivating. He did it on his very last jump at the World Athletics Championships, and the crowd went wild:

  In terms of athleticism and showmanship, Mondo might be the best in the world. Him or Red Panda.

• In the women’s pole vault, Team USA went 1-2 with Katie Moon and Sandi Morris. But I’d like to draw your attention to identical twins Hana and Amanda Moll, who had an identical finish, tying for sixth with 4.65-meter clearances. “Not on purpose,” said Amanda.

• Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone won the 400m, making her the first woman to be champion of both the 400m hurdles and the flat 400. I don’t know why it took so long—Sydney made both races look extremely easy.

• New Zealand’s Geordie Beamish fell during steeplechase qualifying, GOT SPEARED IN THE FACE BY ANOTHER RUNNER’S FOOT, and then came back to win the gold medal.

• His championship race was awesome too, as he went from 11th to 1st on the final lap to win gold by .07 seconds. Not as close as the marathon, but still thrilling.

• Canadian Evan Dunfee won the 35km racewalk, which is an excuse for me to share his episode of my 2021 Olympics podcast — probably my favorite of the whole series.

• And Tara Davis-Woodhall won the long jump, which is an excuse for me to share her performance in this video!

• Colombia has won half of the gold medals at the inline speedskating World Championships, which makes me think some Canadian needs to get their ass to Bogotà and Cool Runnings the country and create a Winter Olympic dynasty.