Track and field was able to steal a little bit of attention from early-season football and playoff-race baseball last week, as the 2025 World Athletics Championships took place in Tokyo, Japan, from September 13th to the 21st.

As expected, the headliners shined: Noah Lyles won gold medals in the men’s 200-meter dash and 4×100 relay; Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone won gold in the women’s 400 meters and 4×400 relay; Sha’Carri Richardson anchored Team USA to gold in the women’s 4×100 relay; Kenya swept the women’s distance events, and Jamaica re-established its dominance in men’s sprinting; Mondo Duplantis set another world record in the men’s pole vault; and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce wrapped up her legendary career with a silver medal for Jamaica in the 4×100 relay.

It was also a successful meet for some Muslim athletes and competitors from Muslim-majority nations. Qatar, Morocco, Algeria, and Bahrain each found seats at the medal table, and the individual standout performances included:

Soufiane El Bakkali, Morocco

Silver, men’s 3000-meter steeplechase

El Bakkali entered 2025 on a major-meet win streak. He’d taken gold at the last two Olympics (2021 Tokyo, 2024 Paris) and at the last two world championships (2022 Eugene, 2023 Budapest). The 29-year-old appeared well on his way to another steeplechase gold at the Tokyo world championships, leading the pack coming out of the last water jump and after the final hurdle. But in the last few meters of the straightaway, New Zealand’s Geordie Beamish caught El Bakkali and passed him at the finish line.

It looked like El Bakkali didn’t even realize how close Beamish was until it was too late. He was devasted in the immediate aftermath, but later in an Instagram post he wrote (translated from Arabic): “I was so embarrassed to stumble last night, but I know that stumbling doesn’t mean the end, every stumble has a story, and mine still continues. … Yesterday was a great race for me, I came away with a silver medal, I lost the gold by small particles. I was disappointed because I felt I deserved it, but this is the hidden side of the sport that only those who challenge themselves and taste the taste of competition know.”

Djamel Sedjati, Algeria

Silver, men’s 800 meters

At the Paris Olympics last year, Sedjati finished third in the 800 behind Kenyan gold medalist Emmanuel Wanyonyi and Canada’s Marco Arop. This year, Sedjati was able to get ahead of Arop, but the Algerian had to settle for second place after Wanyonyi ran a championship-record 1 minute, 41.86 seconds over the half-mile distance.

Sedjati, 26, now has two world championship silver medals, adding to the one he got in 2022.

Winfred Yavi, Bahrain

Silver, women’s 3000-meter steeplechase

Nobody was beating the Kenyan women in any distance races at this world championship meet — not even native Kenyans representing different countries. The women’s 800 meters, 1500 meters, 5000 meters, 10,000 meters, marathon (26.2 miles), and 3000-meter steeplechase were all won by runners wearing KENYA across the front of their uniforms. (As a whole, Kenya won total 11 medals and seven gold medals in Tokyo; second place in both categories behind the U.S., which had 26 total and 16 golds.)

Winfred Yavi was born in Kenya but began representing the Muslim-majority Asian nation of Bahrain as a teenager. She came to the ’25 worlds as the reigning Olympic and world champion in the steeplechase. But in the final, she lost to Kenya’s Faith Cherotich, who ran a championship-record time.

Edmund Serem, Kenya

Bronze, men’s 3000-meter steeplechase

Overshadowed by the furious finish between the gold and silver medalists in the men’s steeple was third-place receipient Serem, who earned his first major-meet medal at just 17 years old.

Serem was in sixth place coming off the race’s final hurdle, but just like Beamish sprinted to a surprising victory, Serem sped past a few runners in front of him and just edged out Ethiopia’s Samuel Firewu at the line for bronze.

Salwa Eid Naser, Bahrain

Bronze, women’s 400 meters

Even though the flat 400 isn’t her primary event, McLaughlin-Levrone (the greatest women’s 400-meter hurdler of all time) was heavily favored to dominate the field in Tokyo. And while the American did run a blazing 47.78 seconds in the final — the second-fastest time in history — Marileidy Paulino (Dominican Republic) and Eid Naser were right on her tail, with bronze medalist Eid Naser finishing just about a stride behind Syd in 48.19 seconds. During the broadcast, NBC announcer Ato Boldon marveled at how McLaughlin-Levrone was actually pushed in this race, considering she usually crushes the competition and is really only racing against the clock.

Eid Naser was born in Nigeria. She was a teenager when her family moved to Bahrain, where her father is from, and eventually she converted to Islam. She won gold in the 400 meters at the 2019 world championships in Doha and silver at the Paris Olympics.

Abderrahman Samba, Qatar

Bronze, men’s 400-meter hurdles

Just watching his post-race reaction, you would have thought Samba won a gold medal in Tokyo. The 30-year-old had in fact finished third in the men’s 400-meter hurdles final, but it felt like a victory for an athlete whose best days appeared to be in the past.

Samba was a track phenom who won two golds at the 2018 Asian Games (400-meter hurdles, 4×400 relay) when he was just 23 years old, and the next year he took bronze at the world championships in Doha, running in front of a home crowd. That was his first major-meet medal, and then it became his last before 2025. In his return to the podium, the Asian record holder won his first heat, then defeated world record holder Karsten Warholm (Norway) in their semifinal, and then ran a season’s best 47.06 seconds in the final.

Samba was born in Saudi Arabia, and began his track career representing the Muslim-majority African nation of Mauritania, then switched allegiances to Qatar in 2015.

A few other notable performances from Muslim athletes at the 2025 World Athletics Championships:

* Algeria’s Yasser Triki had the best mark during the qualifying session for the men’s triple jump at 17.26 meters. In the final, he was the leader after the first of six rounds, hitting 17.25 meters. He was still in bronze-medal position going into the last round, when Italy’s Andrea Dallavalle flew from the middle of the pack into second place, which bumped Triki down to fourth. On his last jump, the Algerian couldn’t get back into the top three and finished fourth overall, about nine and a half inches shy of a medal.

* Dalilah Muhammad of the U.S. — a two-time Olympic gold medalist and two-time world championship gold medalist — finished seventh in the women’s 400-meter hurdles final. Muhammad had won her sixth U.S. national title earlier this year in what was viewed as a year for competitors in the event to capitalize due to McLaughlin-Levrone choosing to focus on the flat 400. (Think of it like the NBA in the 1990s when Michael Jordan retired for a couple of years to play baseball.) At 35 years old, Muhammad’s career is likely winding down, but she ran well in Tokyo, winning her opening heat and finishing second in her semifinal behind eventual champ Femke Bol.

* Early in the 2025 outdoor track season, Ghana’s Abdul-Rashid Saminu ran a world’s-best time of 9.86 seconds in the men’s 100-meter dash. He improved that to 9.84 seconds, which wound up tying for the seventh-best time in the world this year. In Tokyo, Saminu just missed out on making the final of the 100 when he finished fourth in his semifinal heat. And in the 4×100 relay, Saminu barely missed out on a medal when Team Ghana finished fourth.