How the world's top 800m men made history in 2024

Few athletics disciplines have produced as many historic marks in a single season as the men's 800m in 2024. The stunning year of speed prompts the question of how much faster times might drop in 2025, when the season ends at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo.

None other than David Rudisha of Kenya, whose world record has stood since 2012, is watching with interest.

“I believe nothing is impossible,” Rudisha said in August, at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. “The world records are set to be broken. Anytime we set our world record, somebody is looking forward to see how they are going to reach that bar, and with the new technology, the innovation, the good shoes, nothing is impossible.”

Though breaking Rudisha’s world record of 1:40.91 has never been impossible, in recent years it appeared highly unlikely, just the same. 

Over the course of seven weeks between July and August, however, the men’s 800m all-time list was stunningly and repeatedly rewritten by a new wave of challengers, led by Emmanuel Wanyonyi.

The 20-year-old Kenyan won the Olympic gold medal in 1:41.19, edging Canada’s Marco Arop by just 0.01, on 10 August. And just 12 days later, Wanyonyi lowered his PB again to 1:41.11, tying Wilson Kipketer for second all time – just 0.2 off Rudisha’s mark.

“I’m so happy to have run that crazy time,” Wanyonyi said. 

The world all-time top 10 now features five men who all ran faster than 1:41.7 this year: Wanyonyi, Arop (No.4), Algeria’s Djamel Sedjati (No.5), France’s Gabriel Tual (No.6) and Bryce Hoppel of the US (No.7). 

Overall, 10 men ran faster than 1:42.5, all of whom now rank among the 21 fastest performers in history.

In the Olympic final, Hoppel became the first US runner to go under 1:42, while breaking the national record by more than half a second with a time of 1:41.67. That would have earned gold in every Olympic final except for 2012, when Rudisha ran his world record. Yet in Paris, amid the fastest Olympic final in history, Hoppel’s time wasn’t fast enough to even reach the podium, what he termed a “heartbreaking” result that left him fourth behind Wanyonyi, Arop and Sedjati, who ran 1:41.50 for bronze. That wasn’t even Sedjati’s PB; one month before the Olympic final, he ran 0.04 faster.

“It’s great for the 800m, great for the sport, to see some of the all-time greats out there running faster than some people ever have,” Hoppel said. “It's really fun to be a part of that. I just have to work hard and somehow figure out how to beat them.”

Why did 2024 produce so many fast times? 

Hoppel believes the intensity of an Olympic year played a role, but “the spikes, the tracks, all of that plays a factor,” said Arop, who also thinks that taking a bicarbonate supplement for the first time had personally helped him limit lactic acid.

“This is, I guess you could say, the next generation of 800m athletes,” Arop said. “And they're all entering their primes. It's just incredible when one person does something incredible, and everybody else just buys into it.”

So, what will it take to reach the podium at the 2025 World Championships – taking place in Tokyo from 13-21 September – when Wanyonyi, Arop, Sedjati, Tual and Hoppel will all still be in their primes, between 21 and 28 years old?

“Well, I think that world record’s going pretty soon, isn’t it?” said Great Britain’s Max Burgin, who was eighth in the Olympic final.

Both Rudisha and Wanyonyi described establishing a new record as “not easy”. Rudisha noted that in the 43 years since World Athletics President Sebastian Coe ran a then world record 1:41.73 in Florence, the world record has been lowered by less than a second. 

“It tells you that it’s also a very tight world record,” Rudisha said. 

But not an impossible one to break, perhaps. Not after so many athletes ran so fast in 2024.

“I can’t predict that one,” Rudisha said, when asked who could take down his record. “It is hard to say but these guys are in good form.

“Let’s see how they are going to progress. This is the year they have shown that they can really push themselves to the limit.”

Andrew Greif and Michelle Katami for World Athletics