Prior to Monday night, Ditaji Kambundji was not even the biggest athletics name in her family, let alone the field for the final of the women’s 100m hurdles at the World Athletics Championships Tokyo 25.
And yet the Swiss athlete upstaged a series of more heavily fancied rivals to seal a shock gold, shattering her personal best in the process.
Kambundji, whose sister Mujinga is a double world champion indoors and a global medallist outdoors, had struggled to translate her own indoor form in 2025 to the outdoors.
But when it mattered, she produced the race of her lifetime to win in a time of 12.24, which was just shy of Yordanka Donkova’s 27-year-old European record but well below the 12.40 Ditaji had run in Rome last year and Zurich this year.
While the 23-year-old had not been tipped as one of the favourites, the final still appeared to be wide open.
There was the Olympic champion Masai Russell, who had fallen at the last World Championships but was the fastest woman in the world this year with a 12.17 to put her second on the world all-time list.
And there was the one woman faster than her, the Nigerian Tobi Amusan as well as Russell’s US teammate Grace Stark, who has been arguably the most consistent sprint hurdler this season with three Diamond League victories prior to Tokyo.
But Kambundji had a great start and was never bettered as she took the line ahead of Amusan in second with Stark rounding off the podium. Following the win, she had a look of utter disbelief at the result amid emotional celebrations.
Meanwhile, Russell, was thrown off her rhythm by hitting a number of hurdles and missed out on the medals in fourth place.
There was a shock in the semifinals earlier in the evening when Jamaica’s Ackera Nugent missed out on a place in the final, narrowly edged out of the second of the two non-automatic qualifying spots.
The 23-year-old has been one of the more consistent athletes on the world stage this season after taking out a series of the Tokyo finalists in Eugene and Zurich, the latter resulting in her winning the first Diamond League title of her career.
Stark, in the same semifinal, won that ahead of Kambundji. Semifinal two followed the form book as Amusan edged out Nadine Visser to be the fastest into the final.
The world record-holder’s time of 12.36 was just a one hundredth of a second quicker than Stark whose teammate Russell had to work hard to get through the field to win the third semi-final.
Come the final, Kambundji turned the world order on its head for comfortably the biggest win of her nascent career.
Matt Majendie for World Athletics