Rapid-fire finish takes Olympic champion to another golden moment, while Nadia Battocletti breaks Italian record on her way to silver.

The last time a women’s 10,000m world championships final was staged in Tokyo, back in 1991, Liz McColgan defied the heat, the humidity and the opposition to deliver an emphatic gold medal-winning performance. 

Fast forward 34 years and the 2025 version might have been more cat and mouse compared to the Scot’s long run for home, but the gold medal still went to the woman who is the dominant force in the event right now.

Beatrice Chebet, Olympic champion and world record-holder over 25 laps and the 5000m, produced a scorching final 200m of just 27.21 seconds in the stifling conditions to win her first world title in 30:37.61.

Having worked herself into position to attack, the Kenyan’s stark change of gear looked to have blown her rivals out of the water but, though she couldn’t close the gap, Nadia Battocletti hung on with all of her might and produced an impressive closing sprint of her own to break the Italian record in second place with 30:28.23.

Ethiopia’s defending champion Gudaf Tsegay won her fifth world championships medal, completing the podium in 30:39.65.

Even though the race began at 9.30pm Tokyo time and took place under the lights of a packed national stadium rather than the blazing sun, there was still a war of attrition for the athletes to fight down on the track thanks to the heatwave that continues to grip the Japanese capital. 

Understandably opting not to attempt to even remotely match her world record-breaking exploits of 28:54.14 from last year with all-out pace, Chebet was happy to let the opening laps become a far more relaxed affair as first her team-mate Agnes Ngetich and then Japan’s Ririka Hironaka led the field out.

It was with 3600m gone, as Ngetich moved back to the front, that it became clear the two Kenyans were working together to carry out a plan. The pair merrily took turns at the front as part of a leading group that also featured Batocletti, Tsegay and her fellow Ethiopian Ejgayehu Taye.

As the laps ticked over, with halfway reached in 15:16.33, any faint whiff of a move was swiftly dealt with and an inevitable late burn-up was in the process of being set up. The pace cranked up with 800m to go thanks to Tsegay as that band of five stuck tightly together. Chebet was just waiting for her chance, though.

In similar fashion to her 5000m world record run of 13:58.06 in Eugene earlier this summer, where she unleashed a searing closing half lap of 28.61 to underline her finishing speed, the 25-year-old shot from second place and beyond Tsegay, who had been trying her best over the closing laps to really take the fight to her rival. 

There was no answer to that injection of speed, though, and Chebet became Kenya’s first winner of this title since Vivian Cheruiyot in 2015. 

"It was a tough, very tactical race, but I ran the last 800m really hard,” she said, now training her sights on the 5000m. “Tsegay pushed a lot and I had to keep going. I ran 1500m [at the Diamond League] in Silesia, so  in my mind it was like I was at the 1500m race. I had to push and follow, and motivate myself, but I wanted that gold medal so much. I have never won a gold at the world championships so I was sure I had to get it."

For Battocletti, the performance added to her Olympic silver from Paris and her European title from Rome last year. 

"I am starting to like silver medals,” she said. “It's really big for a European girl to win a medal at this event with all the African runners. In the last lap I realised I was a bit too far away from the leading athlete. I wanted to go faster over the last 300m. Unfortunately, I missed a moment for the gold but I am proud."

There was pride, too, for the British pair of Megan Keith (31:33.85) and Calli Hauger-Thackery (31:37.81) finished 10th and 11th respectively. 

“That was tough,” said Paris Olympian Keith, who has had injury battles to fight in recent years and was competing at her second world championships. “I haven’t managed to be healthy and all guns blazing on the start of a championship 10,000m before, because Paris didn't go my way and I was injured also going into the Europeans last year [where she was third]. So it was a new experience to me that I felt like I could fight this time, and I was fit and healthy and ready to go. It was just exciting to be on the startline knowing I could handle what was thrown at me.”

This was a world championships debut for Hauger-Thackery, who had been pre-selected for the marathon but opted instead to compete in the 10,000m in Tokyo and tackle the marathon distance next month in Chicago. It also went some way to helping exorcise the painful memories of Paris, where she was forced to drop out midway through the Olympic marathon.

“It got hard at the end, but I just had to mentally take myself somewhere else,” she said.  “I was telling myself: ‘You're made of tough stuff, and you’ve got to get through it.”