{"id":19250,"date":"2025-09-16T00:04:04","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T00:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=19250"},"modified":"2025-09-16T00:04:04","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T00:04:04","slug":"stoked-beamish-stuns-tearful-el-bakkali-for-world-steeplechase-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=19250","title":{"rendered":"‘Stoked’ Beamish stuns tearful El Bakkali for world steeplechase gold"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u00a0New Zealand’s Geordie Beamish produced a last-gasp spurt to edge defending two-time champion Soufiane El Bakkali for gold in a thrilling men’s 3,000m steeplechase at the world championships in Tokyo on Monday.<\/p>\n

Beamish left it late, sprinting through the crowded field to come alongside the Moroccan — who also won the last two Olympic golds — and pinch a dramatic victory at the line for New Zealand’s first track gold at a world championships.<\/p>\n

The New Zealander, who was spiked in the heats and fell to the track before recovering, clocked a winning time of 8min 33.88sec to halt El Bakkali’s dominant streak on the global stage.<\/p>\n

El Bakkali was seven-hundredths of a second adrift in second, while Kenyan teenager Edmund Serem rounded out the podium (8:34.56).<\/p>\n

The reactions of Beamish, the 2024 world indoor 1,500m champion, and El Bakkali could not have been further apart.<\/p>\n

The 28-year-old Kiwi was left gasping in disbelief as he looked at the results on the giant screens while the Moroccan burst into inconsolable tears and collapsed to the floor.<\/p>\n

“This was a turn-up, wasn’t it?!” Beamish said. “That was pretty unreal. I am still taking it all in. I just can’t believe how hot the crowd was.<\/p>\n

“Everything was hard but it all ended up well for me. I’m pretty stoked. I did a lot in the last 200 metres. You just need to visualise winning before it happens, and it will happen.”<\/p>\n

Beamish added: “I just gave myself a shot in the last 200 metres. I knew I had it in me tonight. I only knew I’d win one metre before the finish and that was enough.<\/p>\n

“It’s a first track gold for New Zealand at a world championships, which is pretty cool.”<\/p>\n

El Bakkali said defeat was “very difficult to accept”.<\/p>\n

“But I have to because this is high-performance sport,” he said. “I congratulated the athlete from New Zealand. I had good tactics but I clipped the last barrier and lost balance.<\/p>\n

“I will work hard to regain the world title. Today was not the result I wanted, but sport wins tonight.”<\/p>\n

It was a remarkable result for Serem in third in what is considered one of the most gruelling events on the track.<\/p>\n

“It is my first world championships and to run the final with all these legends is something amazing,” Serem said.<\/p>\n

“That is a great experience for me as a 17-year-old guy. I have run many Diamond League races with them, but this was different.<\/p>\n

“We have no pacemakers and the race was very slow from the beginning. I tried to take a great position for the last-lap sprints and was sure I’d have enough power because I did a huge job over the last year to increase my endurance and speed.”<\/p>\n

Serem, who trains with Kenyan marathon legend Eliud Kipchoge, said he considered the two-time Olympic champion his mentor.<\/p>\n

“I learned a lot from him,” he said.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0New Zealand’s Geordie Beamish produced a last-gasp spurt to edge defending two-time champion Soufiane El Bakkali for gold in a thrilling men’s 3,000m steeplechase at the world championships in Tokyo on Monday. Beamish left it late, sprinting through the crowded field to come alongside the Moroccan — who also won the last two Olympic golds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}