There are various ways of announcing your arrival on the global athletics stage, and Cian McPhillips has gone straight for the spectacular. No matter what happens next in Saturday’s 800m final his name has already gone down in World Championships history.
Few people gave McPhillips much of a chance of progressing through Thursday’s semi-finals. Not when several men in Tokyo of far weightier reputations were ranked ahead of him, and the 23-year-old from Longford was tasting this unforgiving level of two-lap running for the first time.
Well, just as the storm clouds were threatening above Japan’s National Stadium, McPhillips was utterly unruffled when winning the second semi-final in 1:43.18, kicking past Britain’s Max Burgin in the last 50m. With that began another race to find the superlatives to do it justice – a performance that has the whole world of athletics talking.
The first Irish athlete to make an 800m final, it was the fastest semi-final winning time in World Championship history and would have won the gold medal in the last two editions. It improved his own best by over a second, breaking the Irish record of 1:43.37 set by Mark English last month.
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Just like that, Saturday’s final (2.22pm Irish time) has suddenly opened a world of opportunity.
“Delighted with that, it’s huge,” said McPhillips, the UCD Maths student calculating his effort to perfection. “I’ve been working towards that for a long time. I didn’t really think it was going to come this year. I thought I’d made great progress this year, but that’s more than I expected.
“It got a bit rough, the first 200m, I was kind of on the inside. So there were all coming in on top of me. But you just have to bide your time on these things. The more I race the 800m, the more I learn.”
It also made for a cruelly contrasting night for English, competing on this stage for the seventh time, who ended up third in the first semi-final. After making a bold move to the front with 200m to go, the 32-year-old finished in 1:45.47.
With only the top two from each semi-final progressing, plus the two fastest non-qualifiers, English was promptly relegated by the times from the second semi-final.
As it turned out, the third semi-final was also won in 1:43.18 by Spain’s Mohamed Attaoui, meaning McPhillips goes into the final ranked joint fastest on performances here.
Indeed six of the 10 fastest 800m men who qualified for Tokyo didn’t make the final, including 2019 world champion Donovan Brazier from the US, who could only manage third behind McPhillips and Burgin, clocking 1:43.82.
“Yeah, I came in here (ranked 44th), not much expectation,” McPhillips added. “I was just delighted to be on the plane. Then August was going pretty well, I thought I’d be delighted to make the semi-final, but that was completely unexpected there.
“I was pretty confident after my heat, felt really good, but when you haven’t raced any of these guys before, haven’t really been in this type of race, it’s difficult to know. Thankfully I think I just timed it right to be coming in here in great form, and it’s paid off now with a spot in the final.
“I’ll recover as best I can. I’m just going to go for it, see what happens.”
Everything about the way McPhillips approached this race was inch-perfect, and a repeat of his semi-final performance on Saturday will certainly put him in the mix. After the bell was reached in 52-seconds flat, he clocked 51.1 for the final lap, which will be critical to his medal chances on Saturday.
English also appeared to do everything right in his semi-final, the Donegal athlete making a move to the front with 200m to go, briefly opening half a stride on the chasing group. However, he was passed by defending champion Marco Arop from Canada and Olympic bronze medallist Djamel Sedjati from Algeria, who finished together in 1:45.09, leaving English third in 1:45.47.
At 32, that might well prove the last shot for English to make a global final.
McPhillips had already become the first Irish heat winner in the event on Tuesday. After his season was interrupted by a calf injury sustained in a fall at the European Indoors in March, he’s come to Tokyo relatively fresh compared to his competition and is eminently capable of getting into the medals on Saturday.
The climax of Thursday’s evening session was Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone running the second fastest women’s 400m in history, the US superstar clocking 47.78 seconds, just off Marita Koch’s 40-year-old record of 47.60.
For the first time ever, two women broke 48 seconds in the same race – Olympic champion Marileidy Paulino from the Dominican Republic winning silver in 47.98, with Bahrain’s Salwa Eid Naser winning bronze in 48.19.
