Seiko bell: a legacy for the World Athletics Championships Tokyo 25

As the competition drew to a close on the final day of the World Athletics Championships Tokyo 25, Seiko Group Corporation, the official event timer, gifted the specially produced final lap bell to the Tokyo 2025 World Athletics Foundation. This was done as a symbol of passion and emotion to signify the legacy of the championships. 

Traditionally used to signal the last lap in athletics for middle and long-distance events (800m and above), the Seiko final lap bell was reimagined for the 2025 World Championships, blending Japanese craft with refined aesthetic sensibility.  

The hand-over of the Seiko legacy bell in Tokyo

The bell, cast in bronze – a blend of 80% copper and 20% tin – was created by Oigo Works, a Japanese workshop renowned for generations of fine metal crafts. The Edo-braided cord, in the championships’ official Edo purple and interwoven with gold and silver threads, is a masterpiece designed by Tokyo-based kumihimo cord maker, Ryuta Fukuda. Both elements stand as a true symbol of the passion and emotion of the World Championships.  

Seiko has been a World Athletics partner since 1985 and has served as the official timer for more than 190 World Athletics events. WCH Tokyo 25 also marked Seiko’s 19th consecutive appointment since the 1987 World Championships in Rome. 

The bell was formally presented by Hiromi Kanagawa, Executive Vice President of Seiko Group Corporation, to World Athletics President Sebastian Coe and Mitsugu Ogata, President of the Tokyo 2025 Foundation. With this gesture, Seiko hopes its clear tone will continue to echo in the hearts of the Japanese people and carry the thrill of athletics far beyond the stadium.