Two planes – a Qatar Airways Flight 1345 and Fly Emirates Flight 719 – will land at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport today at 1:40 pm and 2:30 pm respectively with Team Kenya members from the 2025 Tokyo World Athletics Championships that ended on Sunday.
The team will return with Kenya’s best performances at the World Athletics Championships.
Kenya, represented by 59 athletes (36 male and 23 female), ranked second out of the 194 teams (193 countries and the Athlete Refugee Team) that competed at the 20th edition of the championships.
Kenya, with seven titles, was one of 20 countries to win at least one gold medal.
Twenty-eight countries left Tokyo with at least one silver medal, Kenya got two of them. The bronze medal column had 34 countries listed against it; Kenya populated it with two such medals.
Overall, 53 countries won at least one medal in the Japanese capital, Kenya got the second highest tally, 11 (seven gold, two silver, and two bronze).
Kenya finished second at the World Athletics Championships for the fifth time – after 2007 Osaka, 2011 Daegu, 2017 London and 2019 Doha.
Tokyo 2025 was Kenya’s third trip to Japan for the World Athletics Championships – after Tokyo 1991 and Osaka 2007. It ended with Kenya reaping a joint-record seven gold medals for the third time in history – after 2011 and 2015.
Tokyo 2025 also stretched Kenya’s run of scooping at least 10 medals at the World Athletics Championships to 10 editions, starting from Osaka 2007 when Kenya won 13 medals (five gold, three silver, and five bronze), accounting for the country’s third-highest medal tally.
Daegu with 18 medals -- seven gold, eight silver, and three bronze, remains the record haul. Beijing, where Kenya ranked first, follows with 16 medals -- seven gold, six silver, and three bronze).
Tokyo 2025, the sixth edition of the championships to be held in Asia, was certainly the best ever outing for Kenyan women.
They women won the gold medal in all six middle and long distances races, marking the first time a country has achieved this in the history of the competition.
Peres Chepchirchir, who won the marathon at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, was big in Japan yet again with her victory in the women’s 42km race.
Gold medallist, Beatrice Chebet of Kenya celebrates winning with silver medallist Faith Kipyegon, also of Kenya, during the women's 5,000m medal ceremony at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo on September 21, 2025.
Photo credit: Reuters
Double Olympic champion Beatrice Chebet shuffled her feet to gold medals in the women’s 5,000m and 10,000m to add to her two Olympic titles and two world records .
She became the first woman – and third athlete after the Jamaican Usain Bolt (100 and 200 metres) and Ethiopia’s Kenenisa Bekele (men’s 5,000m and 10,000m) – to hold two world records, two world titles, and two Olympic crowns at the same time.
Faith Kipyegon won the women’s 1,500 metres for a record fourth time but left Tokyo with unfinished business. Her winning time of 3:52.15 seconds brought her close to breaking the championships record of 3:51.95 held by Sifan Hassan from 2019 Doha. She is the Olympic record holder over the distance.
Kenya's Faith Kipyegon (centre) celebrates with her gold medal alongside silver medallist Dorcus Ewoi and fourth placed Nelly Chepchirchir after winning the women's 1500m final at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo on September 16, 2025.
Photo credit: Reuters
Still, Kipyegon’s sprint to glory dragged Dorcas Ewoi to Kenya athletics history with her silver medal. Their 1-2 finish in the race was the first by Kenya.
Kipyegon’s silver medal in the women’s 5,000 metres was equally historic. It saw her surpass Ezekiel Kemboi’s seven Worlds medals in the men’ 3,000 metres steeplechase – four gold and three silver, and become Kenya’s most decorated athlete at the championships with eight medals.
She has are five gold (four in 1,500m, one in 5,000) and three silver (two in 1,500 metres and one in 5,000 metres).
Kenya's Faith Cherotich celebrates with the national flag after winning the women's 3000m Steeplechase final at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo on September 17, 2025.
Photo credit: Reuters
Faith Cherotich in women’s 3,000 metres steeplechase, Lilian Odira in women’s 800 metres and Emmanuel Wanyonyi in men’s 800m. Cherotich, 21, left Nairobi a princess and became queen in Tokyo.
A bronze medallist at Budapest 2023 and the 2024 Paris Olympics Games, Cherotich finally hacked the order of succession in the women’s 3,000 metres steeplechase.
She dethroned the former world champion, the Kenyan-born Bahraini Winfred Yavi, with a championship record time of 8:51.59. Yavi, the Olympic champion, settled for silver.
In the women’s 800 metres final, Odira galloped to victory in a championship record and with such graceful aura.
Her winning time of 1:54.62 slashed 0.06 seconds off the previous record set by the Czech Jarmila Kratochvílová in Helsinki on August 9, 1983. It had stood defiantly for 15,384 days.
It was also the first time Kenya was registering two consecutive gold medals won in the women’s 800m. Mary Moraa could not defend her title fading to a seventh placed finish.
Kenya's Emmanuel Wanyonyi celebrates after winning gold in the men's 800m at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo on September 20, 2025.
Photo credit: Sarah Meyssonnier | Reuters
Wanyonyi expended every sinew in his mortal frame to puffing his chest and craning his neck for the narrowest of wins with a championship record time of 1:41.86.
The 21-year-old Kenyan beat Algerian Djamel Sedjati to second place by just 0.04 seconds. Giant Canadian, Marco Arop, took bronze with a time of 1:41.95, completing a podium that echoed with Kenya’s previous victory in the event – Oregon 2022 when another Emmanuel (Korir), won gold for Kenya in the event with Sedjati and Arop taking silver and bronze respectively.
Athletics Kenya will need to do a detailed review and find out what went wrong for the men, previously the reliable gold winners vis a vis their female compatriots.
Kenya’s other male podium finishes were Reynold Cheruiyot, who won bronze in the 1,500 metres and teenager Edmund Serem, who claimed bronze in the 3,000 metres steeplechase.
