TOKYO (AP) — This year’s out-of-nowhere winner of the men’s 1,500 meters hails from Portugal. It’s Isaac Nader, who ran five wide down the stretch Wednesday night to pull what can only be described as a stunner at world championships, even against a field that lost three of its top contenders long before the finish line.
Nader took advantage of a leisurely pace and beat 2022 champion Jake Wightman, who also wasn’t expected to contend, by .02 seconds. The winning time: 3 minutes, 34.10 seconds.
“There were 14 men in the final, and I thought it was possible to win,” Nader said. “I told myself before the race that I was either going to finish 14, or I was going to finish first.”
Reynold Cheruiyot finished third while one of the favorites, Niels Laros, faded at the end and wound up fifth. Another top contender, 2023 world champ Josh Kerr, pulled up lame in the third lap and then finished the race nearly 30 seconds off the pace.
The 26-year-old Nader came in ranked eighth in the world and had never placed in a major championship. He was a 50-1 longshot.
“It’s the same story every year in the 15,” Wightman said. “Whoever goes in the favorite always seems to have a bit too much of a target. I don’t think one person would have expected Nader to win that.”
Laros, the 20-year-old from The Netherlands, was considered the odds-on favorite. His chances only got better when the reigning Olympic champ, Cole Hocker, got disqualified for jostling in the semifinals and the 2021 Olympic gold medalist, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, came to Tokyo out of form and didn’t make it out of the opening heats.
Then, Kerr started limping at about the 800-meter mark — leaving Wightman and 2019 champion Timothy Cheruiyot as the only two racers left with winning experience at the highest level.
Laros traded the lead with Timothy Cheruiyot over the first three laps but finished only one spot ahead of his placement at the Paris Games last year, where he was a bit player in a drama involving Kerr, Ingebrigtsen and Hocker.
“It’s not the first time I’m surprised in this championship about something that happened in the 15,” Laros said.
Nader’s biggest win up to now was in the Dream Mile in Oslo in June — a race that didn’t feature any of the top names in four-lap races.
That probably explained his look of pure shock when Nader looked up at the scoreboard and saw he was finishing first, barely ahead of Wightman, who stumbled to the ground at the finish but came up short.
Asked to describe in Portuguese his feelings about coming from nowhere to put his name next to some of this sport’s greatest champions — champions of the metric mile — Nader said: “Inacreditável (Unbelievable).”
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