Nigeria Finishes 27th Overall at 2025 World Athletics Championships in Record-Breaking Tokyo

Nigeria finished the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo with a silver medal and ranked 27th overall in what was the competition’s most globally significant year to date.
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At the 2025 World Athletics Championships, Tobi Amusan was reported to have won Nigeria’s only medal, solidifying her place as the country’s most reliable athlete on the global scene. Her incredible run of top-level consistency continued as she dominated the women’s 100-meter hurdles to win silver.

Ezekiel Nathaniel’s victory in the men’s 400-meter hurdles was nearly even more joyful.

He finished fourth in a thrilling competition that briefly saw him rise to bronze after American Rai Benjamin was disqualified, but the decision was overturned on appeal. He beat his own national mark with a time of 47.11 seconds.

Additionally impressive was Kanyinsola Ajayi, who advanced to the men’s 100-meter final and finished sixth.

Udodi Onwuzurike advanced to the men’s 200-meter semifinals, and Chukwuebuka Enekwechi finished in fifth place, just missing the podium in the men’s long jump.

Some of the Nigerian team’s 15 members had a harder time. In the women’s 100-meter heats, Rosemary Chukwuma lost, Israel Okon failed to duplicate his heat-winning performance in the men’s 100-meter semifinal, and Chidi Okezie and Samuel Ogazi lost the men’s 400-meter race.

Prestina Ochonogor and Ese Brume both left the women’s long jump, Sade Olatoye bowed out in the hammer, while Chioma Onyekwere-Lyons and Obiageri Amaechi failed to make any progress in the discus. Charles Godfred was unsuccessful in the men’s long jump qualifying as well.

With just one silver medal, Nigeria finished tied for 27th place with 12 other countries, including Algeria, Greece, Ireland, Morocco, and Poland.

The United States won 26 medals in total, including 16 golds, dominating the medal rankings. The Netherlands, Canada, Botswana, and Kenya completed the top five. Ultimately, 53 nations made it to the medal table, surpassing the previous record of 46 established in Osaka in 2007 and Budapest in 2023.

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There were several historic moments in Tokyo 2025. Mondo Duplantis of Sweden set a new world record in the pole vault with a 6.30-meter clearance. There was one world record, nine championship records, and nine continental records set. While Tanzania celebrated its first global gold, Samoa, Saint Lucia, and Uruguay received their first-ever medals from the event.

One of the most impressive athletes was Melissa Jefferson-Wooden of the United States, who won gold in the 100-, 200-, and 4×100-meter relays, completing an incredible triple.

While Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone swept to the women’s 400m gold in 47.78 seconds, the second-fastest time ever, Beatrice Chebet of Kenya and Maria Perez of Spain each doubled their victories. With a championship record of 84.70 meters in the hammer throw, Ethan Katzberg of Canada also made history.

Outside of the racetrack, the championships set new standards. almost nine days, almost 619,000 fans showed up, surpassing the attendance figures from Tokyo 1991. On the first day, over 12 million people watched TV in Japan, and three-quarters of Sweden saw Duplantis’ world record vault live, setting new records for TV viewership.

World Athletics recorded 700 million views on social media, and more than 125,000 pieces were published globally, reaching an estimated 180 billion people.

As he praised the host city for providing “the noisy, full stadiums that we missed during the pandemic-hit Tokyo Olympics in 2021,” World Athletics president Sebastian Coe called the Tokyo event “a championships for the ages.”

The championships featured 1,992 athletes from 193 countries, including the Athlete Refugee Team. Twenty nations took home gold, and seventy-four had top-eight finishes.