VOTING BY OUR 34-member international panel in this annual exercise — our 66th year of choosing a Men’s Athlete Of The Year — was scored on a 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 basis…
Fully half of the top 10 — AOY Mondo Duplantis, Rai Benjamin, Emmanuel Wanyonyi, Ethan Katzberg, Noah Lyles — are returnees from the “class of ’24”… Duplantis, Benjamin and Lyles are at 5 consecutive Top 10s and Lyles has appeared 6 of the last 7 AOY years (there was no AOY vote in pandemic ’20)… Benjamin and Lyles are joined from Team USA by Top 10 newcomer Cordell Tinch. The record U.S. head count is a half-dozen, most recently achieved in ’19…
1. Mondo Duplantis (Sweden)
Every time the vault god joins a list, you can bet it’s an elite one. The latest for the U.S.-born high-flyer is that of the most No. 1s. With previous leaderships in ’22 and ’24 he now has 3, sharing the all-time high with legends Carl Lewis, Hicham El Guerrouj and David Rudisha. He also became the sixth with a perfect score, joining Henry Rono ’78, Michael Johnson ’96, Usain Bolt ’08 & ’09 and David Rudisha ’10. Setting 4 WRs can do that for you. And he achieved all his ’25 feats while still just 25.
2. Emmanuel Wanyonyi (Kenya)
Moving up a spot from last year, the dominant 2-lapper churned out a trio of 800s in the 1:41s, topped by a list-leading 1:41.44. With his having turned just 21 in mid-summer, his career obviously has a long way to go. En route to winning WC gold he scored no fewer than 5 Diamond League wins, including the big Zürich finale. Does he have a future at the next step up in distance? He PRed in both the 1500 (3:35.18) and road mile (3:52.45), winning both.
3. Rai Benjamin (USA)
The planet’s top 400 hurdler showed how tough placing high in the balloting can be. He was last year’s runner-up with 62.4% of a perfect vote. This year he improved that share to 65.3%— and dropped to the No. 3 position. The 28-year-old’s 5 finals were all sub-47s and averaged a brilliant 46.718. After his WC gold he picked up a second medal, his 44.40 anchoring the U.S. 4×4 to silver. He’s the first 400 hurdler to be U.S. Men’s AOY since Kevin Young in ’92 and the first to be a long-hurdle repeater since Edwin Moses in 1977–78.
4. Noah Lyles (USA)
At 28 Lyles is still searching for his first World AOY title. He has consistently been close since first appearing in ’18 as No. 4 (and No. 1 U.S.). He followed up with a No. 2 (and repeat USAOY) in ’19, no votes in ’21 (No. 9 U.S.), No. 4 in ’22 (and a third USAOY), No. 4 in ’23 (No. 2 U.S.) and No. 10 in ’24 (and No. 3 U.S.). He now has a streak of 5 years in a row in appearing in both the 100 and 200 honors list.
5. Cordell Tinch (USA)
Tinch, with a delayed debut in the big-time, came on like gangbusters in ’25. In addition to his wheelhouse event, he ran 3 meets in the 100, a half-dozen in the 60H and 16 (plus 5 prelims) in his go-to event, the 110H. His 12.87 in Shanghai made the 25-year-old the =No. 4 performer ever and was just 1 of 5 sub-13s (4 legal). He finished his season with 3 straight major league sub-13 wins: Lausanne (12.98), Zürich (12.92) and the WC (12.99). His career top-10 average is now a sparkling 12.991.
6. Ethan Katzberg (Canada)
In an event where seeing domination by grizzled vets isn’t uncommon, Katzberg is breaking new ground for a mere 23-year-old. He broke into the Rankings with a No. 2 in ’23 and has now been No. 1 for 2 years in a row. No other North American has ever successfully defended his leadership. Producing 5 of the 9 longest throws of the year, he moved to No. 5 on the all-time world list (to win WC gold) as he repeated in the No. 6 position in the AOY voting.
7. Sabastian Sawe (Kenya)
Talk about a late bloomer! The year’s top marathoner didn’t first appear with an international-caliber mark until he was 25, and ran 13:42 at altitude in Nairobi. That’s still his PR. In ’22 he showed real promise with a 27:09 and that promise bloomed in the fall of ’23 when he won the World Half-Marathon. Then came ’24 and a brilliant 26-mile debut: 2:02:05 to win Valencia in world-leading time. Two more WLs popped up this year: 2:02:27 to win London, 2:02:16 to win Berlin. So his career average is 2:02:16, faster than the PRs of all but 5 other runners.
8. Mykolas Alekna (Lithuania)
A pair of World Records can cover up a multitude of sins in the win-lose department. Thus it was that Cal’s Baltic discus star somehow managed to lose the NCAA, 1 of his 4 DL meets and the World Champs (all by a single place) but still not only ranked No. 1 in his event but also managed to earn a spot here. He’s got a way to go to take any family records away from father Virgilijus, who in the course of Ranking 17 times became the event’s all-time wins leader with 7.
9. Oblique Seville (Jamaica)
You’d probably be rather surprised to learn that Seville, 24, is the first Jamaican man to make the Top 10 since ’17. You might be even more surprised to learn that his predecessor was hurdler Omar McLeod. Seville was anything but a unanimous choice for No. 1 in the 100. He won fewer than half his races and wasn’t even the yearly list leader. However, he won one of the most high-profile WC golds and finished his season with a trio of high-class wins: London (9.86), Lausanne (9.87) and the WC (9.77).
10. Julian Weber (Germany)
Heading into Tokyo, 30-year-old Julian Weber looked to be well positioned to claim a spot in the higher echelons of the AOY Top 10. He had won 9 of his 10 meets, with the sole loss being by less than a foot, virtually nothing in the javelin. He owned the year’s 3 farthest marks and 6 of 9. In other words he had comfortable margin for error. But as for the other highly rated spear chuckers, the Tokyo sky wasn’t conducive to recognizing theoretical form. He ended up a mere 5th, not that that killed his event leadership. But he was compromised here.
