'Tis The (End Of The) Season ⏱️
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Sponsored by Olipop
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Compiled by David Melly & Paul Snyder
Five Off-Track Moments That Defined 2025 👀
It can be very exciting to watch a ten-second race from one end of the track to the other. Or rewatch with your friends and family over a glass of eggnog and a crackling fire, given that not much new track is happening in the penultimate week of December. But sometimes, the excitement over a particular result or matchup comes not from the performance on the track itself, but from all of the leadup and fallout that happened outside the stadium.
While the year’s on-track action was some of the best in recent memory, the highs and lows the sport experienced outside of official competition were also mighty notable. We saw villain arcs emerge, all-time greats step away from the sport, and huge swings at innovation with mixed results. We had to learn about bankruptcy law and sit by watching while the non-track world suggested that six seconds isn’t that much time over the course of a mile.
Some moments inspired, others enraged, and plenty more left us scratching our heads. And above all, we were grateful that the dull moments were few and far between.
Some things were too good to be true: This much is certain: on October 13th, 2024, Ruth Chepngetich completed the Chicago Marathon in two hours, nine minutes, and 56 seconds, obliterating the existing world record and becoming the first woman to run under 2:10 for 26.2. Even though it happened, it was almost unfathomable. That 2:09:56 mark remains the fastest time on the books, but it now carries an asterisk that many felt was implied from the beginning. This March, Chepngetich was popped for a masking agent and is now in the midst of a three-year doping ban. Because her suspension was only backdated to April of this year, her results prior to that haven’t been wiped out of the ledger.
Was this a depressing nadir for the sport? A sign that no amount of doping control can ever really tamp down the tide of cheating? Or was it proof that the system—with all of its slow-moving quirks—actually works? Maybe some combination of both. It’s hard to say. But this much is also certain: you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in the sport defending Chepngetich’s 2:09 marathon as the legitimate world record. So maybe the Pyrrhic victory of achieving an increasingly-elusive popular consensus matters more than what any all-time list says.
Grand Slam’s cracks start to show: Michael Johnson’s big, braggadocious foray into the pro racing scene dominated the headlines this year. Unfortunately for him, the headlines were mostly and increasingly negative, as the league that billed itself as the most lucrative opportunity for track and field high-earners found itself in intractable financial trouble, ultimately filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy—sorry, “court-supervised reorganization.”
GST was a big, bold idea that couldn’t quite get the momentum to take flight. The sport needs big, bold ideas and people willing to try them! But it also needs, well… money. If one moment defined the struggles of GST this year, it has to be the announcement of the cancellation of the Los Angeles meet. It’s not exactly a good sign to get three laps into a mile and then step off the track. And yet, the League insisted that the early ending was because they’d proven the concept so effectively that a fourth event was simply unnecessary, which in retrospect really seems like an inflection point where criticism of GST’s approach started to become more of a widely-held sentiment. If there’s one thing track and field fans won’t buy, it’s any attempt to spin a DNF as a season’s best.
Faith Kipyegon shoots for the moon: Technically, the “Breaking4” project happened on a track. But the off-the-books, unsanctioned Nike expo was more of a science experiment located at a carnival than a track meet, so it lands in the “off-track” category for us. That certainly shouldn’t be taken as a sign of disrespect to the GOAT of the 1500m, who still ran one mile faster than any woman ever had before, even if she did fall short of the four-minute barrier by a decently large margin.
Really, the most impressive part of Kipyegon’s exhibition was her willingness to step off the beaten path. There’s almost nothing left for Faith Kipyegon to accomplish on the normal checklist, so instead we have to measure her 2025 season in streaks: her fourth world record, her fourth World title, her four-year winning streak in the 1500m, etc. Even if it was an exercise in marketing hype and brand visibility, Breaking4 couldn’t have happened without Faith saying yes to something weird and new.
Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce passes the baton: Technically, SAFP’s final baton pass was an on-track moment, as she handed off the hopes of Jamaican sprinting both literally and figuratively to the 21-year-old Clayton twins on the Worlds 4x100m. But none of SAFP’s performances in her final year of professional competition were particularly notable, especially when held up against two decades of historic excellence.
Instead, what we’ll remember from Shelly-Ann’s victory lap is that she had the opportunity to end her legendary career the right way: on her terms. It would’ve been all too easy to take her ignominious conclusion to the Paris Olympics as a sign from above to hang ‘em up, but instead SAFP had the opportunity to travel the globe on a farewell tour, allowing fans and rivals alike to pour one last draught of praise into her overflowing cup. It’s not often that you get to send off an athlete whose career is so long and storied with a fitting and overwhelmingly positive goodbye, and it sure feels good. She deserves it, and we do too.
Kerley got Enhanced: 2025 was not a great year for Fred Kerley. He was arrested twice in South Florida and issued a years-long suspension for whereabouts violations. But now, even if he wanted to come back and compete at the conclusion of his ban, he won’t be able to, because he also signed on to compete in the Enhanced Games on September 17th.
This is hopefully all we’ll ever write about the Enhanced Games—so let’s just establish that its existence sucks. In some sense, we understand why Kerley, already serving a ban and unable to make a living from track and field otherwise, would sign on. But in doing so, he lends a frustrating credibility to the Enhanced Games. Here’s an athlete who at his prime was legitimately great—will he be able to dip under Usain Bolt’s 9.58 with a significant amount of pharmaceutical assistance? Probably not, but who knows. But the open-ended question will inevitably attract some eyeballs, even if they are just tuning in with hopes of watching failure. All that accomplishes, really, is the continued enrichment of some particularly ghoulish people looking to exploit athletes who have—for one reason or another—backed themselves into a corner.
Look, you’ve seen the hats: we love track and field. Generally speaking, that statement is about the competition-side of the sport. But all the wild stuff that takes place outside of the oval can be plenty entertaining as well. Here’s hoping 2026 provides lots of incredible racing, jumping, and throwing… and maybe just a handful of bizarre happenings that get our group chats firing on all cylinders.
The Definitive, Unimpeachable, Official Best Athletes Of 2025 ☝️
How do you rank the unrankable?
This is an issue we wrestle with every year, whether it’s in the Bowerman voting, World Athletics awards, or the actual World Athletics ranking system: how do you compare and contrast athletes within one sport that’s actually really 20 different sports branded as “track and field?” It’s an inherently impossible task, which is why it’s so fun to try. (And then fight with the trolls who didn’t like our picks, thought we were too pro-American, not pro-American enough, too focused on times, not focused on the Diamond League, etc.)
Generally speaking, there are three big considerations that go into an athlete’s measure of track and field greatness: What did they achieve at their peak (PBs, world records, world leads), who did they beat (win streaks, head-to-heads), and did they win the events that mattered (championships, top-tier races)? Most of our favorite athletics stars take home the big bucks because they do two of the three very well. But very few pull of all three. There was only one athlete in the entire world this year who set a world record, completed an undefeated season, and won a World Championship, and he’s arguably one of the greatest athletes in the entire history of the sport. Everyone else fell just a little bit short of perfection in one way or another, but that just gives us the opportunity to pit the world-beaters against one another and make very subjective totally unimpeachable decisions about relative greatness.
So here’s one more ranking to sum up the year in track and field before we turn our sights to the future.
TLC’s top five male athletes of 2025
1. Mondo Duplantis: That athlete we alluded to in the intro who hit the trifecta? Yeah, it was pretty obviously this guy. Because he didn’t lose a competition all year, he of course struck gold at World Indoors and World Outdoors, and in winning the latter, he raised his own world record bar to 6.30m. Unless you want to really use a metric that no one else takes seriously, there’s basically no way to slot Mondo Duplantis as anything other than the top track and field athlete of 2025.
2. Kishane Thompson: Here’s where we start having to make some judgement calls. Working against Thompson is the fact that two losses over 100m this year bookend his outdoor campaign, which means he wound up in silver position in Tokyo. However, he did run the fastest time in the world in 2025 (9.75) and tallied at least one win against every other top-tier short sprinter, including his countryman Oblique Seville, who took home the ‘W’ at Worlds. In an event that—on paper—lacked a consensus top dog coming into the season, Thompson came as close to dominance as was likely possible.
3. Noah Lyles: And here’s where we are likely to really ruffle some feathers. Lyles placed third in the 100m at Worlds, behind the two aforementioned Jamaicans. So what’s he doing in this placement? Well, despite what Paris’s podium might suggest and what Noah probably wishes, he’s just not a 100m specialist. And in the 200m, despite an injury-truncated campaign, Lyles was phenomenal. In that event, he went undefeated, secured his fourth World gold, and posted the fastest time of the year in 19.51. Given Lyles’s track record and penchant for running his mouth, few athletes in the sport enter the arena with a bigger target on their back—so credit is due when he delivers on his ample promise, and promises!
4. Ethan Katzberg: The gargantuan Canadian had himself a hell of a year, and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in the sport who would suggest anybody else had a better season in the men’s hammer. Katzberg’s 84.70m heave in Tokyo was over a meter clear of anybody else’s best throw in 2025, and—duh—was plenty good enough for him to win World gold. But Katzberg also finished second thrice this season: at two meets in Eastern Europe, Hungary’s Bence Halász got the better of him, and at Pre, American Rudy Winkler took him down.
5. Cordell Tinch: In the short hurdle sphere, nobody hit higher highs than Tinch: he ran the world lead in the 110mH (12.87), won the Diamond League Final, and took home gold in Tokyo. But his results sheet’s blemishes are more notable than any of the men ranked ahead of him. He only managed to place fourth at the U.S. Indoor Championships in the 60mH and he wasn’t the U.S. champ outdoors either. His worst placing in a final was fifth, and while it was at the first Grand Slam event, that’s still the sort of blot that’ll cost you on the Lap Count’s year-end rankings!
Honorable mentions: Mykolas Alekna (reset his own discus WR and won the DL final but lost both NCAAs and Worlds), Rai Benjamin (won Worlds in the 400H but was not the fastest man of the year), Emmanuel Wanyonyi (800m World and DL final champ but ran much slower than last year), Oblique Seville (World 100m champion but 1-2 against Thompson head-to-head this season)
TLC’s top five female athletes of 2025
1. Melissa Jefferson-Wooden: 2025 was in nearly every imaginable way the year of MJW. Her 10.61 100m and 21.69 200m at Worlds resulted in two world leads and two gold medals. As the year progressed, it became abundantly clear that if anyone wanted to beat her come championship time, they’d need a perfect day and for her to be off her game. And yet, one non-relay loss on her card—a third-place finish in the 200m at GST Miami—stands between MJW and the full Mondo treatment. Otherwise, she ran the fastest non-FloJo 100m time in American history, and moved up to U.S. all-time No. 4 (behind FloJo, Gabby Thomas, and Marion Jones) in her secondary event, the 200m.
2. Beatrice Chebet: Chebet became the first woman to break 14 minutes in the 5000m, going 13:58.06 at Pre. On top of that, she took home World gold in both the 10,000m and 5000m. That’s one hell of a slate of accolades right there. But since we are really being picky here, Chebet has something Jefferson-Wooden doesn’t: two on-track losses—a third-place showing at her national championship 10,000m and a runner-up finish in the 1500m at the Silesia Diamond League. Now, we’d love to give her credit for racing an “off distance,” but that’s not how these rankings work, folks. Undoubtedly a great year for Chebet… but this is a game of inches!
3. Valarie Allman: Again, here is where things get tricky. Allman won every competition she entered – for the second season in a row. With what amounts to a perfect season, placing wise, and having thrown the world lead when she uncorked at 73.52m American record at the Ramona wind tunnel, why is she only our third-ranked athlete of the year? For the same reason field athletes tend to wind up further down every ranking than their track-based peers: MJW and Chebet were exceptional over multiple events, and in the case of Chebet, set a world record. Allman had an almost perfect year. But if she wants to claim the top honor in the sport—the number one spot in a weekly newsletter’s end-of-year athlete rankings—she’ll have to do all that plus set a world record next year.
4. Tara Davis-Woodhall: Poor Tara Davis-Woodhall, destined for the Valarie Allman treatment. Davis-Woodhall went undefeated on the year, which of course means she won the U.S. Championships and Worlds. On two separate occasions she leapt 7.13m—the world lead—and she hasn’t lost a long jump competition since the 2023 World Championships in Budapest. The only real “knock” against her otherwise unimpeachable 2025 campaign is that she didn’t set records or venture outside her primary event.
5. Faith Kipyegon: How in the world does Faith Kipyegon—the GOAT!—wind up in the number five spot? Two reasons. One, she’s raised the bar so astronomically high for herself that it makes things like a world record and a gold medal a little less special. And second, she didn’t quite pull off a clean racing card. While we certainly could applaud Kipyegon for stepping up to the 5000m at Worlds, knowing full well she’d face stiff competition from her compatriot who’s the world record holder and Olympic in the event, a loss is a loss. So despite setting a real world record in the 1500m, asterisk-edly running faster than any woman in history for the full mile, and winning her fourth World gold over 1500m, this is where she lands.
Honorable mentions: Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (World 400m champ and American record, but didn’t bother racing much in her best event), Julien Alfred (second-best sprinter in the world this year but unfortunately beat by MJW every time), Faith Cherotich (steeplechase World and DL champ but not the fastest woman this year)
There you have it. Consider this rankings list our holiday gift to you: something to fight about with your relatives over the dinner table that doesn’t involve politics or religion. If our choice of top Jamaican enrages you, bring it up while angrily waving a glass of wine. If you think we did a good job, print out a copy and defiantly slam it down on the coffee table at halftime of a football game and explain to your Sydney-pilled uncle why she doesn’t make the cut. ‘Tis the season!
More News From The Track And Field World 📰
– A little more on Grand Slam: On a Very Special Episode of the CITIUS MAG podcast (okay, a normal episode where the aforementioned context came up), Chris Chavez, Mac Fleet, and Preet Majithia spoke about the GST bankruptcy news and the role CITIUS MAG played with the league over the last year.
– The resurrected Marathon Project was contested on a series of loops around Chandler, Arizona’s Rawhide Western Town & Event Center. When the dust and Looney Tune-style tumbleweeds settled, JP Flavin (2:09:18) and Priscah Cherono (2:25:17) were the winners. All in all, 18 American men and seven women hit the Olympic Marathon Trials standards.
– Please join us in a spirited but respectful “Roll Tide” followed by a “Woo Pig Sooie!,” as the Bowerman was swept by SEC stars: Doris Lemngole of Alabama and Jordan Anthony of Arkansas.
– Speaking of Lemngole, she’ll be matching up with Jane Hedengren over 3000m at the 2026 Millrose Games. The 1-2 from NCAA XC have yet to face off on the track, and Hedengren is riding high of a huge NCAA record in the 5000m in December. Hedengren was on the CITIUS MAG podcast this week to talk about her stellar start to her collegiate career.
– Brian Musau, the two-time NCAA champ for Oklahoma State has “pulled a Gary” and signed an NIL deal with Brooks NIL.
– Charlie Lawrence broke big Jim Walmsley’s American 100k record at the Desert Solstice Track Invitational, covering the distance in 6:07:10. When contemplating what it must be like to run 62+ miles entirely around a track, we’re inclined to paraphrase Jurassic Park: “Ultrarunners were so preoccupied with whether or not they could hold 5:55 pace for 100k on a track, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
– It’s a party in the USA Great Britain! Lucia Stafford has become the latest North American middle distance star to link up with the M11 Track Club for their training group needs.
– After 2025’s one-day edition was the highest scoring single-day track meet in history by WA points, the Pre Classic is back to a two-day affair for 2026.
– Familiar names in unfamiliar places: Five-time global champion Joshua Cheptegei (1:11:49) and Degitu Azimeraw (1:19:36) won the Steel World 25k in Kolkata, India.
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MJ was a great 200/400 man, a good track commentator and a terrible businessman. Wish he hadn’t damaged his reputation with GST.
It seems as if the “Lap Count” is obsessed with all manner of end of season awards and rankings. It was a much better newsletter when it dealt more with analysis and news. As a long time track and field fan I could care less about the subjectivity of awards. Analysis of what is going on in the sport is infinitely more interesting.