Marathoners usually practice for high endurance and ability to run through treacherous terrains but at the World Athletics Championships 2025 in Tokyo, the 42.195 km race was decided by three hundredths of a second.
Alphonce Felix Simbu poured every drop of energy left in him on the finish line and snatched gold in the first photo finish at a major championship marathon edging out German Amanal Petros in a dramatic race to the line to give Tanzania its maiden world title.
Simbu surged past the diving Petros at the line which was closer than the gap between the top two finishers in men’s 100m (0.05 seconds) and women’s 100m (0.15 seconds).
After the race, the timings of both Simbu and Petros read two hours, nine minutes and 48 seconds, the German taking silver despite entering the last stretch of the race as the leader in the Tokyo’s National Stadium.
“When we entered the stadium, I was not sure if I would win,” the 33-year-old Simbu said. “I did not know if I had won. But when I saw the video screens and me on the top of the results, I felt relieved. “I made history today – the first Tanzanian gold medal at a world championships.”
Reacting to the dramatic finish, Petros said,”It’s like the 100 metres.Coming into the finish I was thinking about winning so a bit of me is feeling very sad.”
It marked the second straight day a marathon was decided with an all-out sprint to the line. The day before, Peres Jepchirchir won the women’s race by 0.2 seconds.
WATCH: Photo finish at World Athletics Championship to decide Marathon winner
After 42.2km, this is the most insane finish to a marathon you’ll ever see.
A photo finish was needed to determine the winner: Tanzania’s Alphonce Felix Simbu. #WorldAthleticsChamps pic.twitter.com/6u1izgWVss
— John Dean (@JohnDean_) September 15, 2025
The finish was closer than at the 2001 championships in Edmonton, when Ethiopian Gezahegne Abera edged Kenyan Simon Biwott by a single second.
South African Josia Thugwane won the closest Olympic men’s marathon by three seconds from South Korean Lee Bong-ju at the 1996 Atlanta Games.
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It was a first global title for Simbu, who won bronze in the marathon at the London world championships in 2017 and finished second in the Boston marathon in April.
The dramatic finish came one day after Frenchman Jimmy Gressier produced a superb last kick in the men’s 10,000m final to become the first man outside the Africa to win the title for more than 40 years.
The race also had a dramatic start as the Kenyan Vincent Kipkemoi Ngetich jumped the gun forcing a restart.
The race was widely open for most of the distance and more shocks followed as two of the fastest runners in the field, Ethiopia’s Tadese Takele and Deresa Geleta, who took gold and silver at the Tokyo city marathon in March, dropped off with less than 10km to go.
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Eritrean-born Petros looked set to take the title back to Europe until Simbu found a late kick and ran him down at the line.
