Time out of mind. It’s the only way Cian McPhillips could possibly have raced the 800 metres final that unfolded in Tokyo on Saturday. He wasn’t alone.
McPhillips described his final finish as “basically an Olympic final, I got beaten by the three medallists”.
He had already gone straight for the spectacular when announcing his arrival on the global athletics stage, the 23-year-old from Longford winning his semi-final on Thursday in 1:43.18 – taking a second off his previous best while also taking the Irish record from Mark English.
Come Saturday, none of the eight World Championships finalists were thinking about anything other than their finishing position. Times would be irrelevant if they didn’t put that thought first.
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It very nearly worked for McPhillips, who did his best Dave Wottle impression on the last lap, only to run himself into fourth position, 0.2 of a second off bronze. Wottle, remember, sat at the back of the Olympic 800m final in Munich in 1972, then went from fourth to first down to homestretch to win the gold medal for the USA.
A year later, Wottle broke the 800m world record.
McPhillips possibly left himself with a little too much to do, moving from eighth to fourth down the homestretch, but once the times popped up on the stadium there was the realisation he could hardly have run any harder. His 1:42.15 was the sixth fastest time in European athletics history and would have won him gold at every previous World Championships. For the first time ever, all eight runners in the same race broke 1:43.
In fact, all eight of the 800m times on Saturday would have won the gold medal two years ago in Budapest. Two years ago, the fastest 800m time was 1:42.80. The last place in Tokyo was faster than that, the 1:42.77 clocked Tshepiso Masalela from Botswana.
For Emmanuel Wanyonyi, the 21-year-old Olympic champion from Kenya who has run 1:41.11, the best way to ensure his finishing position is to go out superfast, which is exactly what he did here, taking control from the gun and passing 400m in 49.27.
McPhillips sat sensibly just off that pace, clocking 50.27, and by the end Wanyonyi was just holding on – winning gold in 1:41.86, a championship record. Djamel Sedjati from Algeria won silver in 1:41.90, with defending champion Marco Arop from Canada taking the bronze medal in 1:41.95.
““I thought I might have had them,” McPhillips said. “If I’d a bit more home straight to work with. But that will come next time. I gave it everything I had, and I don’t think I could have ran it any differently and done better.
“A bit p**sed, but maybe that’s to be expected, when I calm down, I’ll probably appreciate it a bit more. I think I put it up to them, it just wasn’t enough in the end. I think I showed tactical awareness throughout the rounds, so proud with how this has gone. I kind of ran out of real estate there at the end. It’s another national record, almost a three second PB this year, a huge push on. And opens a lot of doors for next year.”
Wanyonyi’s 1:41.86 took the championship record from Donovan Brazier of the US, who ran 1:42.34 to win gold in 2019, but as McPhillips noted himself, he was the first European finisher in his first major championship final.
Consider too where he started from this season, his best before 2025 being the 1:45.92 he ran in 2023.
One of the telling comments made by McPhillips in Tokyo was about the faith he’s kept in his coaching and support team in UCD, where he’s studying maths, when some people still believe he might have been better served attending a US college.
“Some people give out – you can’t really do it in Ireland, or maybe the environment isn’t there,” he said. “I haven’t had that experience. I think I’ve a fantastic team around me. My family, my friends, my coach Joe Ryan, my S&C and speed coach Martina McCarthy. I’ve a fantastic set up, numerous people supporting me, and delighted I could finally deliver after all these years.”
Like Kate O’Connor, his big focus for 2026 will be the European Championships in Birmingham next August.
