Saturday night & Sunday morning's report from the 'Pest...

BUDAPEST, Hungary--Sixteen of the seventeen athletes with ties to the state of Washington have finished their competition here in Budapest, as we enter the final day of the nine-day extravaganza known as the World Athletics Championships Budapest 2023.

Nia Akins of the Brooks Beasts is the only athlete remaining in the meet, as she'll run in the finals of the women's 800 at 8:45 pm local time (11:45 am Pacific), where she has a legitimate opportunity to go back to Seattle with a medal.

Akins has actually looked good in the heats, winning in the first round, and staying with Great Britain's Keely Hodgkinson before easing up in the semis on Friday night, cruising in to set a personal best of 1:58.61.

With no Washington athletes competing in Saturday night's session, it was nice to be a fan and marvel at some of the top performances of the evening including:

--Mondo Duplantis of Sweden's total dominance of the men's pole vault field, winning with a clearance of 20-0 (6.10m), and making every height on his first attempt; 

--Chase Ealey of Team USATF repeating as the women's shot put champ, putting the competition away early with a first round throw of 66-9.25 (20.35m), and adding an exclamation point in round 5 with a throw of 67-0.5 (20.43m) for good measure; 

--The "dog" mentality by the US 4 x 100 meter relay teams in winning the world title on International Dog Day.

Team USATF has never had the best passing squad at either the world championships or the Olympics, simply because of the sheer difficulty of getting athletes to practice passing together, not to mention the egos involved.

USA's women's squad of Tamari Davis, TT Terry, Gabby Thomas and Sha'Carri Richardson (Paul Merca photo) got the baton around the track in a championship meet record 41.03, ahead of Jamaica, which had 200m champ Shericka Jackson on the anchor, and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce running second leg.

--Finally, my personal favorite from Saturday night's session was the win by Edmonton's Marco Arop in the men's 800, winning in 1:44.24 after taking the lead with about 250 meters to go.

I've been privileged to announce the Edmonton Invitational meet the last two years, with Arop as the meet's headline attraction. It's simply awesome to get to know folks like Marco, shot putter and silver medalist Sarah Mitton, and many others competing throughout these world championships on a personal level. 

When they took their victory laps and stopped to say hello to me (I was on the other side of the advertising boards just outside lane 9), you can feel the sense of pride over what they accomplished. It's hard to explain it unless you are there in the moment.

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Early Sunday morning, I was back out on the marathon to shoot the men's race for a client who hired me at the last minute.

While out on the course, it was great to see Seattle resident and world 1500 meter champ Josh Kerr (holding cutout photo of Zach Panning/Paul Merca photo) of the Brooks Beasts along with teammate Isaiah Harris watching the marathon in support of Brooks athlete Zach Panning.

In case you didn't stay up late Saturday night in the US to watch the marathon, Victor Kiplangat of Uganda won in 2:08:53 on a warm morning, and Panning was the top American in 2:11:21.

I'm going to take a nap and get ready for Sunday night track & field here at the 'Pest!

Results of day 8 and start lists for day 9 are available here.

Don't forget to visit our buymeacoffee.com site to access exclusive member and supporter only content throughout the world championships.

NOTE: World Athletics, the WABudapest 23 Organizing Committee, Athletics Canada and USA Track & Field contributed to this report.

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