The winning margin was 5 points which as of July 2024 remains the joint-narrowest winning margin in the men's heptathlon at these championships. The gold medallist achieved the best score in the shot put.
In the 60 metres, Warner ran the top time of 6.74, his personal best, but Mayer was only .11 behind, also running his personal best, putting Warner 41 points ahead. In the long jump, Kazmirek boomed a 7.68 m (25 ft 2+1⁄4 in) personal best to offset one of the poorer 60 metre times to move into a tight group fighting for third place. Oleksiy Kasyanov actually held an 8-point advantage in third, with Dominik Distelberger joining the other two within 13 points of each other. At the top of the leader board, Mayer had another personal best of 7.55m in the long jump to pull within two points of Warner. In the shot put, Mayer overpowered Warner, his 15.67 m (51 ft 4+3⁄4 in) more than two feet further than Warner, who threw his personal best 14.90 m. Mayer had a 45-point lead. Kazmirek's personal best 14.55 m shot put put him 16 points up for third place. As the last event of the first day, Mayer and Warner topped out at 2.02 m, with Kazmirek gaining a little ground with a 2.05 m. At that height, Maicel Uibo had barely warmed up. Uibo kept clearing heights all the way up to 2.17 m (7 ft 1+1⁄4 in), which also moved him into a solid third place, exactly 100 points behind Mayer.
Warner began the second day with a 7.67 60 metres hurdles, 0.16 s better than Mayer and enough to pull him back to four points behind. Both Kazmirek and Uibo ran personal bests, but Kazmirek was .24 better to give him a 45 point advantage. Kasyanov pushed over a hurdle to take himself out of the race. In the pole vault, Warner got over a personal best 4.90m to only lose 10 cm and another 30 points to Mayer. Again on the vertical jump, Uibo excelled clearing a personal best of 5.30 m (17 ft 4+1⁄2 in), which was matched by Eelco Sintnicolaas who was still in sixth place, behind Zachery Ziemek. But Kazmirek had also jumped a personal best 5.20 m, so Uibo was still 13 points behind. In order to win the championship, Warner needed to beat Mayer by about 3 seconds in the 1000 meters, and Uibo needed to beat Kazmirek by about 1.3 seconds. Both Warner 2:37.12 and Uibo 2:38.51 ran personal bests in first and second place. Mayer was able to stay about 2 and a half seconds behind Warner to take the championship by a scant 5 points. Uibo beat Kazmirek by over 3 and a half seconds to take the bronze. Warner was able to beat Mike Smith's 25 year old Canadian national record.
