Jenoah McKiver’s collegiate career was anything but easy. Across three years at Iowa and two at Florida, the North Carolina native suffered injury after injury, including eight hamstring tears. Track and field had let him down so many times, but he never gave up on it.
Last week in Tokyo, McKiver’s patience and tenacity was rewarded with a pair of relay medals at the 2025 World Athletics Championships.
Earning a spot in the U.S. relay pool thanks to a strong fifth-place finish at the USATF Outdoor Championships in August, McKiver got his first taste of the international stage in the preliminary round of the mixed 4x400-meter relay on the morning of Sept. 13. The Americans won their heat with McKiver running the third leg, but he knew there was room to improve in the final.
“I feel like I relaxed too much,” McKiver said. “We’ll take the final, and we just gotta set the bar a little higher.”
In the final, McKiver split 43.91-seconds on the third leg, significantly faster than he ran in the prelim earlier that morning and significantly faster than anyone else in the race. McKiver’s performance and a strong second leg from Lynna Irby-Jackson fueled the U.S. contingent to a gold medal in 3:08.80, equaling the meet record set by the American squad from 2023.
“We all know we ran well in prelims, but we knew we had more in us,” McKiver said. “Going into finals, we just told ourselves to bring it home. We held something back in prelims, in the finals let’s do it.”
Seven days later, McKiver took to the track again for the preliminary round of the men’s 4x400-meter relay, an event where the U.S. has medaled in every edition of the World Championships since 2003, winning gold nine times. However, a botched second handoff after interference from the Zambian team created a gap that was too much for McKiver to close on the anchor leg, and it seemed as though the Americans would miss the final.
However, a successful protest by USATF created a two-team run-off the following morning between the U.S. and Kenya, who had also been interfered with by Zambia, with the winner earning a spot in the final. On anchor again, McKiver brought his team across the line first on the strength of a 44.46-second leg. The entire preliminary quartet was swapped out for the final, but McKiver still was awarded a silver medal after the Americans finished a narrow second to Botswana in the final.
McKiver earned two of the five medals awarded to former Gators in Tokyo from Sept. 13-21. Eighteen former Florida athletes made the trip across the Pacific to compete, representing nine nations and qualifying for a total of 11 finals.
The second leg in the final was run by Florida alumnus Jacory Patterson. Patterson, the seventh-place finisher in the open 400-meter final, completed his leg in 44.22 seconds, handing off the baton nearly a half-second ahead of the eventual champions in Botswana.
The other two medals by former Gators were claimed by Anna Hall and Grace Stark.
After winning bronze at the 2022 World Championships in Eugene, Oregon, and silver in the 2023 edition in Budapest, Hall completed her medal set with a dominant heptathlon performance across Sept. 19-20. She was the favorite coming into this meet after scoring 7032 points in Götzis, Austria, earlier in the summer, and delivered on expectations. Hall’s 6888-point total was 174 points ahead of the silver medalist, Ireland’s Kate O’Connor.
Hall finished inside the top three in five of seven events, and breakthrough personal bests in both the shot put and javelin throw were key to her victory. Her 15.80-meter effort in the shot put was 95 centimeters better than any other woman in the field and her 48.13-meter mark in the javelin was nearly a meter better than her previous personal best.
“He’s the leader of the train right now,” Hall said about UF throws coach Eric Werskey.
Stark, the NCAA champion last June in the 100-meter hurdles, capped her first season as a professional with a bronze medal. After running the second-fastest time in both the preliminary and semifinal rounds, Stark crossed the finish line in 12.34 seconds in the final, finishing behind Switzerland’s Ditaji Kambundji and Nigeria’s Tobi Amusan, the world record holder.
“It was a rough college career” Stark said. “I had really high highs and really low lows, it felt like it was up and down constantly. My professional has been going well so far and I’m super excited to continue it.”
Gators long jumper Claire Bryant had a strong showing at her first global outdoor championship, finishing fifth in the women’s long jump final with a 6.68-meter jump, while Olympic bronze medalist Jasmine Moore finished seventh in a deep women’s triple jump competition, leaping 14.51 meters.
Inside the throwing circle, Florida senior Alida van Daalen made her first global final in the women’s discus, where she finished 11th with a best mark of 62.24 meters, and Thomas Mardal finished sixth in one of the best men’s hammer competition in history. Mardal’s best throw of 78.02 meters is the third-best mark of his career and this meet represented his best placement ever at a World Championship or Olympics.
Andre De Grasse and Laulauga Tausaga-Collins, who train in Gainesville but compete collegiately elsewhere, had standout performances.
After failing to advance from the semifinals in the 100 and 200 meters, De Grasse assumed his usual spot on the anchor leg of Canada’s 4x100-meter relay team. The Olympic champions from last August, the Canadian squad got De Grasse the baton in second and he held that position through to the line, finishing behind the U.S. in 37.55.
Tausaga-Collins, the defending world champion, finished sixth in the women’s discus final, putting up a strong title defense with a mark of 65.49 meters.
Contact Paul Hof-Mahoney at phof-mahoney@alligator.org. Follow him on X at @phofmahoney.
Paul is a senior sports journalism student and is the cross country/track and field reporter in his third semester with The Alligator. In his free time, you can catch him scrolling Twitter to keep up with an endless flood of track results and training for the media 800-meter race at the World Athletics Championships.
