Spaniard Mariano Garcia became the new world champion in the 1500-meter indoor race, winning gold at the 2026 World Championships in Torun.
In the final on Sunday, March 22, 28-year-old Garcia was the only one to run 3:40 minutes, 0.43 seconds ahead of last year's outdoor world champion Isaac Nader.
With the “gold”, Garcia completed the tournament, in which he dominated the 1500 m. He also became the fastest among all qualifiers, showing a time of 3:38.19 minutes – among the remaining 29 runners, the Frenchman Titoin Le Gris came closest to him with a lag of 0.73 seconds.
2026 World Indoor Championships. 1500m Final (Men)
- Mariano Garcia (Spain) 3:39.63
- Isaac Nader (Portugal) 3:40.06
- Adam Spencer (Australia) 3:40.26
With the title of world champion, Garcia achieved several notable achievements at the tournament:
- became the first Spanish winner in the history of the World Championships in running at a distance of 1500 meters;
- first to combine the world indoor championship titles at distances of 1500 and 800 meters (2022);
- brought Spain its only “gold” of the 2026 World Cup, which allowed the team to rise to sixth place in the medal standings, outside the top 15.
“This is only my first year of seriously training for the 1500m. What could be better than winning the World Indoor Championships?” Garcia said after the competition.
Garcia ran the 1500m qualifying heats fastest of the 30 competitors. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel
“I hope I can stay at this level in the coming years because I'm still a rookie. They don't really know me yet. No one has been able to control me in this race. But I think my opponents will be watching me more closely now.”
“I just wanted to sneak into the final and see if I could fight for a medal. But when I found myself in the lead, I said that now I can compete for the gold medal.”
Garcia, who has previously specialized mainly in the 800m, has focused on the 1500m this season. However, since the beginning of the year, he has only won gold at home tournaments: he won in late January in Valencia (3:37.22) and won the national winter title in the same arena in early March (3:43.80).
Mariano set his personal best in the 1500 m at another tournament last winter: in Karlsruhe, Germany, in early February, he ran 3:35.53 – then with this result he took only fourth place.
In addition to two indoor titles, Garcia's other major international “gold” was a victory at the 2022 European Summer Championships in the 800 m distance.