Marco Arop ready for title defence at the 2025 World Athletics Championships
There’s something about the 800m. It’s long enough for tactics, for drama. It’s short enough that the speeds are awe-inspiring. The world record time has stood untouched for 13 years, but there’s a current cast of characters that are tantalizingly close to breaking it.
And perhaps none is more electric to watch than Canada’s own Marco Arop, who enters the 2025 World Athletics Championships as the reigning world champion and Olympic silver medallist. He is the first Canadian to ever win a world championship title in the 800m. He’s the Canadian record holder and North American/Central American/Caribbean record holder (1:41.20). He’s the fourth fastest 800m runner ever.
Chatting with Arop at the 2025 Canadian Track and Field Championships, where he won his fifth national title, he says the goal for Tokyo is simple: “I’m going back to try and defend my title.”
At 6 feet 4 inches, Arop often towers over his fellow middle distance competitors and is impossible to look away from on the track. With his height making it difficult for him to run in the middle of the pack, early in his career he developed a frontrunning reputation.
But at the 2023 World Athletics Championships and Paris 2024 Olympic Games he demonstrated brilliant racing tactics, in both cases falling to the back of the pack for the first lap before laying down a scorching second 400m.
At this point in his career, Arop has proved himself to be an incredibly versatile runner, both tactically and distance-wise.
Seeking to capitalize on his fitness after the Paris Games, Arop took a swing at the non-Olympic event of the 1000m in September 2024, looking to best Noah Ngeny’s world record of 2:11.96 set in 1999. Arop raced to a time of 2:13.13, establishing a new Canadian record.
Arop made an even greater jump up in distance in December when he raced the Rocket City Back Half Marathon in Huntsville, Alabama, winning in a time of 1:11:15—not a claim that many elite 800m runners can make.
This past season saw Arop playing around with distance a bit, racing the 1500m more than usual. This was in large part motivated by his participation in the inaugural season of the Grand Slam Track circuit. Athletes competed in racing groups—in Arop’s case the “short distance group”—in which athletes raced both the 1500m and 800m with the best overall racer winning.
In May, Arop won the overall short distance title at the Philadelphia Grand Slam event after running a personal best of 3:35.58 in the 1500m, showing that he’s not out of place in the event and causing some of the world’s top middle-distances athletes to jokingly ask that he please not put too much of his focus on it in the future.
“It’s been fun just re-learning how to race again in the 1500m,” said Arop. “It’s got so many challenges, and it’s a really fun race that I enjoy to do.”
And his international competitors may have some cause for nerves in the future. While Arop will be singularly focused on his signature distance at these world championships, he’s not ruling out an 800m/1500m double at future big meets.
“I think in the future I’ll be doing more 1500s, maybe try to double at the next world championships. But for now, it’s just a great learning opportunity, and I think it’s helped me get stronger in the 800m,” said Arop.
After the Canadian championships, Arop headed to St. Moritz, Switzerland for a stint at altitude, and then competed in the Diamond League stop in Lausanne. His fifth place finish there was enough to qualify him for the Diamond League Final in Zurich where he ran 1:42.57 to place third. Then he was off to Gifu, Japan for the Team Canada staging camp.
Arop’s consistent rival, 2024 Olympic champion and 2023 World silver medallist Emmanuel Wanyonyi of Kenya, is his biggest threat to a title defence at the upcoming world championships. Wanyonyi is tied as the second fastest 800m runner of all time, with his best time just 0.09 quicker than Arop’s. The two have pushed the event closer to David Rudisha’s longstanding world record of 1:40.91, set at the London 2012 Olympic Games.
For over a decade, no one came along that seemed to be a threat to Rudisha’s epic performance. That all changed in 2024, when several athletes, including Arop and Wanyonyi, dipped below the 1:42 mark multiple times. Wanyonyi has run the fastest time thus far in 2025, clocking 1:41.44 at the Monaco Diamond League stop in July.
Olympic bronze medalist Djamel Sedjat of Algeria is also a podium threat, along with American Donovan Brazier. The crowd at the U.S. Championships was stunned when 16-year-old Cooper Lutkenhaus ran his way onto Team USA with a 1:42.27 for silver. His debut at the world championships will certainly be a storyline to watch, as he faces up with a star studded field.
With world championships taking place in September, the track season has stretched itself out almost all the way into the start of the winter sport season, so it seemed fitting to ask Arop what sport he’s most excited to watch at the upcoming Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games.
“Hockey is the go-to one, but I think it would be awesome to see the bobsleigh team,” said Arop. “I’m always seeing track and field athletes go up and run it as well. I think that’s the closest to one to my sport. It’s going to be fun watching hockey, bobsleigh, and just all of it.”
You can tune into the 2025 World Athletics Championships, September 13-21 on CBC Sports. The first heats of the men’s 800m will take place on Tuesday, September 16 at 6:35 a.m. ET.
