Day 5 of the 2023 World Athletics Championships: historic double gold medal in Budapest

Sometimes, even the fiercest competitors take a break to celebrate sport and healthy rivalry for a moment.

Athletics is full of examples in this regard. It happened in Berlin 36 with Luz Long’s historic gesture of solidarity, helping Jesse Owens to evade the plot of null suspects in the classification of the long jump.

It happened in Mexico 68, when Australian Peter Norman expressed solidarity with the Black Power protest of Tommie Smith and John Carlos on the 200-meter podium.

It happened two years ago when, entering the tiebreaker zone of the high jump final, the enormous Mutaz Essa Barshim offered Giammarco Tamberi to share the title that he could perfectly have aspired to win in solitude.

And it happened again today when, in the middle of a tremendous finale of the party on the track, Olympic champion Katie Moon whispered to Nina Kennedy that, if she agreed, they could dispense the jump-off and define the test with two gold medals. Few things would have been fairer: a night in which the Australian surpassed her Personal Best twice deserved to finish with a golden podium.

A beautiful image that contrasted brutally with that of the Norwegian Jakob Ingebrigtsen, for whom the silver medal in the 1500s was so little that he deserved no other gesture than a grimace of dissatisfaction. It wasn’t just his fault either: it wasn’t easy to imagine such a final sprint by the British Josh Kerr, a brand-new and thoughtless champion.

Kennedy and Moon were tied by exceeding 4.90 meters on the third attempt. After failing in the 4.95 meters and equalized in everything, they made the decision to share the world title. Ten centimeters down and away from the fight, the Finnish Wilma Murto won the bronze one with 4.80.

Some of the glitter in the Hungarian night also belonged to Marileidy Paulino. The 400-meter champion became the first woman from the Dominican Republic to win a gold medal at a World Championship. The sprinter, silver in Tokyo 2020, won the title with her personal best (48.76s), which allowed her to leave behind the Polish Natalia Kaczmarek (49.57) and Sada Williams (49.60), from Barbados.

Beyond the surprise -and the frustration of the Norwegian- today will be hard for Briton Josh Kerr to forget. The bronze medalist in Tokyo 2020 won the 1500 meters with a mark of 3:29.38 and as in Eugene 2022, Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen had to settle for second place in the World Championship by finishing with 3:29.65, just ahead of his compatriot (3:29 .68).

Finally, it would be thankless not to measure the enormous performance of Karsten Warholm, winner of his third title in the 400 with hurdles.

But the great photo of another great day of athletics was given by two pole vaulters with an unbeatable breeze of fresh air.