Recovering from a fall in the heats, when he copped a foot in the face, Beamish\u2019s already famous kick-finish was sparked entering the last 300m, when he was second to last.<\/p>\n
He flew home over the last 150m, making his move just after the water pit to make up more than 10m of ground on race favourite and leader and two-time Olympic champion Soufiane El Bakkali, of Morocco to win in the last metre.<\/p>\n
He clocked 8m 33.88s and was ranked No 31 on 2025 world rankings this year, with a season\u2019s best of 8m 13.86s. El Bakkali, who entered with a 2025 best of 8m 0.7s, clocked 8m 33.95s.<\/p>\n
Geordie Beamish after winning the 1500m as an Under-20 runner at the Potts Classic in Hastings 10 years ago. Photo \/ NZME<\/p>\n
In about 14 minutes on his feet at a media conference after the race, Beamish, son of farmers Simon and Josi Beamish, spoke of how he had come back from the disappointment of failing to make the final at the Paris Olympics last year, struggling even to mention the words \u201cParis\u201d or \u201cOlympics\u201d without emotion.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s unreal. I never thought I\u2019d be world champion once … to do it again is pretty unbelievable,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve just been enjoying the last hour or so, it was a special moment in the stadium.\u201d<\/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.<\/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,\u201d he said. \u201cPush 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 \u2013 that was a bit of a question mark having not raced for a long time \u2013 was as good if not better than what I thought it was going to be, so maybe a blessing in disguise.\u201d<\/p>\n
The possibility of him running in Hastings would depend entirely on the athlete\u2019s programme, the opposition available and other factors.<\/p>\n
But other top New Zealand athletes are possible starters, including Olympic Games high jump champion Hamish Kerr and shot putters Tom Walsh, Jacko Gill and Hastings\u2019 Nick Palmer, who was 15th at his first senior World championships in Tokyo this week but did not qualify for the final in which former champion Walsh was 4th.<\/p>\n
Hawke\u2019s Bay does have other up-and-coming steeplechase athletes, and has produced national champions in the past, and Potts hopes the gold medal success will encourage others into athletics.<\/p>\n
Doug Laing has been a reporter more than 52 years, including more than 40 in Hawke\u2019s Bay. He has covered most aspects of news, including sports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The next-best result was possibly Beamish\u2019s World indoor championships 1500m gold medal last year. It was also New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[26020,16671,7793,24823,18430,4915,2082,24822,4241,15312,5194,1976,1345,26022,26019,8599,111,139,1536,69,26023,1527,6641,213,24825,2951,26021,377,379],"class_list":["post-25788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-afoot","tag-athletics","tag-bays","tag-beamish","tag-champs","tag-classic","tag-for","tag-geordie","tag-gold","tag-greatest","tag-hastings","tag-hawkes","tag-home","tag-idol","tag-medal","tag-moves","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-next","tag-nz","tag-potts","tag-return","tag-runner","tag-sports","tag-steeplechase","tag-town","tag-usbased","tag-world","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25788","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=25788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}