\u201cIt\u2019s unreal. I never thought I\u2019d be world champion once…to do it again is pretty unbelievable. I\u2019ve just been enjoying the last hour or so, it was a special moment in the stadium,\u201d the 28-year-old said after the race.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was unreal, I felt like I could feel it in my chest how loud it was.\u201d<\/p>\n
A distraught El Bakkali, who has claimed the past two world titles and two Olympic titles, collapsed to the ground sobbing after being chased down by the Kiwi, needing to be consoled by teammate Salaheddine Ben Yazide.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very difficult for me to accept this result but I have to because this is high performance sport,\u201d he told AFP.<\/p>\n
El Bakkali eventually joined Beamish in his victory lap before both runners took a dip in the water pit.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a legend in the sport,\u201d Beamish said after his win. \u201cProbably made the steeplechase what it is over the last five to six years. He\u2019s got four in a row, I\u2019m never going to win as many races as he has, I\u2019m never going to run as fast as he has I\u2019m sure, but that\u2019s fine by me. It was special to share a victory lap with him. He\u2019s a legend.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gold medalist Geordie Beamish of New Zealand and silver medalist Soufiane El Bakkali of Morocco celebrate with their medals inside a water jump pool following the Men’s 3000 Metres Steeplechase final. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
New Zealand\u2019s six previous titles at the World Championships were in field events – one in discus (Beatrice Faumuina in 1997) and five in shot put (Valerie Adams in 2007, 2009, 2011 and 2013; Tom Walsh in 2017).<\/p>\n
\u201cI made headlines for all the wrong reasons two days ago,\u201d Beamish said of the photo going viral of a competitor\u2019s foot on his head after he fell in the heats.<\/p>\n
\u201cMade some new headlines today. Push those ones out. I fell with a lap to go but got up and felt really comfortable coming by everyone still and realised that the fitness, that was a bit of a question mark having not raced for a long time, was as good if not better than what I thought it was going to be, so maybe a blessing in disguise,\u201d Beamish said of his heats run.<\/p>\n
Geordie Beamish tries to avoid the foot of Canada’s Jean-Simon Desgagnesduring the heats for the 3000 Metres Steeplechase at the World Athletics Championships Tokyo 2025. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
It was a big night at the National Stadium in Tokyo with Armand Duplantis breaking the pole vault world record for a 14th time.<\/p>\n
The Swede retained his crown with a vault of 6.15m before having a crack at his own world record which he beat with his third and final attempt at 6.30 metres.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt the only way to leave Japan was to set the world record,\u201d said Duplantis.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was my mentality. I don\u2019t know what is next for me at this moment, I don\u2019\u2019t care.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will just enjoy this right now. I was feeling really good the whole day. I knew I had the record in me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US-based Havelock North runner is the first New Zealander to secure a gold medal on the track…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24261,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[836,24824,16671,24823,5759,14045,1438,5904,24822,4241,111,139,69,213,24825,6202,377,2963],"class_list":["post-24260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-836","tag-3000m","tag-athletics","tag-beamish","tag-championships","tag-emphatic","tag-fashion","tag-final","tag-geordie","tag-gold","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports","tag-steeplechase","tag-wins","tag-world","tag-zealands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}