Beatrice Chebet (© Marise Nassour / Diamond League AG)
Just 11 days after taking the running total of world record performances in this trailblazing Wanda Diamond League season up to a magnificent seven with their momentous marks in Silesia, Mondo Duplantis and Jakob Ingebrigtsen will be back in action in Zurich’s stellar Weltklasse meeting on Thursday (5).
The last leg of the Diamond League campaign before the grand final in Brussels on 13-14 September has attracted 14 gold medal winners from last month’s Paris Olympics – including four athletes who have got in on the world record fest since Duplantis kicked off the season with a new men’s pole vault height of 6.24m in Xiamen on 20 April.
Duplantis, whose 6.26m clearance in Silesia on 25 August represented his third world record of the year, on the back of his 6.25m vault in Paris last month, will be joined by Ingebrigtsen, Beatrice Chebet and Yaroslava Mahuchikh on a night when the Weltklasse promises to live up to its traditional billing as “the Olympics in one day”.
The Letzigrund Stadion has not witnessed a world record since Yelena Isinbayeva’s 5.06m pole vault back in 2009, and perhaps the 100m head-to-head that Duplantis has chosen to undertake with 400m hurdles world record-holder Karsten Warholm on the hallowed Zurich track on Wednesday evening (4) might sharpen the Swede’s speed for a further attempt on the men’s vault record on Thursday.
The sprint challenge – to be streamed on Inside Track – was laid down when the pair were training in the Stade Louis II the day before the 2023 Diamond League meeting in Monaco. “I’m not saying I’m going to kick your ass, but I’ll give you a run for your money,” Duplantis told his Norwegian friend.
Duplantis’ best 100m time, a windy 10.57, dates back to high school days in 2018. Warholm clocked 10.49 in 2017, the year he won the first of his three world 400m hurdles titles.
A Duplantis defeat in any discipline would represent a track and field novelty. The 24-year-old has won 17 successive pole vault competitions since finishing fourth in that Monaco Diamond League meeting in July last year.
Chris Nilsen, the US vaulter who hit the unexpected jackpot that night in Monte Carlo, is joined in the Weltklasse field by compatriot Sam Kendricks and the emerging Greek Emmanouil Karalis, who earned Olympic silver and bronze respectively behind Duplantis in Paris.
As for Ingebrigtsen, having destroyed Daniel Komen’s 3000m world record with a jaw-dropping 7:17.55 in Silesia, a 1500m race for the ages awaits.
The world and Olympic 5000m champion takes on the three men who swept past him to claim Olympic 1500m gold, silver and bronze in Paris: the inspired Cole Hocker of the US, Britain’s Josh Kerr and Yared Nuguse, also of the US.
The line up also includes Briton Elliot Giles, fresh from a 3:51.3 road mile world record ahead of Nuguse in Dusseldorf on Sunday (1).
Kerr outkicked Ingebrigtsen to land the world title in Budapest last year and did the same to win the Bowerman Mile in the Eugene Diamond League meeting in May but the 24-year-old Norwegian has not lost a 1500m race on the Diamond League circuit since he finished runner-up to Kenya’s Timothy Cheruiyot in Zurich three years ago.
He finished comfortably clear of Hocker at the distance in his first post-Olympic outing in Lausanne on 22 August and completed his preparations for Paris with a European record 3:26.73 in Monaco, 0.73 shy of Hicham El Guerrouj’s 1998 world record.
Just for the record, there has only been one global mark for the men’s 1500m made in Zurich: in 1979, when the long-time Weltklasse promoter Res Brugger famously barred Steve Ovett from facing Sebastian Coe because he didn’t want the rivalry to interfere with the latter’s shot at a third world record in 41 days, which Coe duly achieved in 3:32.1.
Chebet – who bagged two Olympic golds in five days in Paris, her 5000m and 10,000m successes the only individual double in the French capital – may well be motivated to chase a second global mark in four months in the women’s 5000m in Zurich.
In the Eugene Diamond League 10,000m in May, the 24-year-old Kenyan clocked 28:54.14, becoming the first woman to crack 29 minutes for 10,000m, a feat first achieved on the men’s side by Emil Zatopek in 1954.
She stands third on the all-time list at 5000m with the 14:05.92 she clocked in the wake of Ethiopian Gudaf Tsegay’s world record 14:00.21 at the Diamond League Final in Oregon a year ago.
However, only two other women on the Zurich start list have broken 14:20.
World 10,000m bronze medallist Ejgayehu Taye, who finished sixth in the Olympic 5000m final, has a best of 4:12.98. Fellow Ethiopian Tsigie Gebreselama, second to Chebet in the 2023 World Cross Country Championships, has run 14:18.76.
Mahuchikh remains unbeaten in the 2024 outdoor season, two months on from her 2.10m high jump world record in the Paris Diamond League meeting at Stade Charlety.
Yaroslava Mahuchikh in the high jump in Paris (© Christel Saneh)
The 22-year-old faces the three women who joined her on the Ukrainian-Australian Olympic podium in Stade de France: silver medallist Nicola Olyslagers and joint bronze medallists Eleanor Patterson and Iryna Gerashchenko.
The women’s pole vault in Zurich’s Hauptbanhof, Main Train Station, on Wednesday (4), pits Australia’s Olympic golden girl Nina Kennedy against fellow medal winners Katie Moon of the US and Canada’s Alysha Newman – plus Switzerland’s European champion Angelica Moser, who was fourth in Paris.
Another Swiss star who just missed the podium in the French capital, Simon Ehammer, takes on Olympic men’s long jump medallists Miltiadis Tentoglou of Greece, Jamaican Wayne Pinnock and Italian teenager Mattia Furlani, as well as Norway’s surprise Olympic decathlon champion Markus Rooth, who will be making his Diamond League debut.
Three other events also feature a full set of Olympic medal winners.
In the men’s shot, Ryan Crouser rejoins battle with US teammate Joe Kovacs and Rajindra Campbell of Jamaica, while in the women’s 100m hurdles Masai Russell of USA faces France’s Cyrena Samba-Mayela and Puerto Rico’s Jasmine Camacho-Quinn. In the men’s 110m hurdles Grant Holloway takes on US colleague Daniel Roberts and Rasheed Broadbell of Jamaica.
St Lucian sprint sensation Julien Alfred tackles her first race since storming to 100m gold and 200m silver in Paris, lining up at the shorter distance against Sha’Carri Richardson, who took 100m silver behind her and 4x100m relay gold.
The field also includes Dina Asher-Smith and Daryll Neita, members of Britain’s silver medal-winning 4x100m quartet, and Switzerland’s European 200m champion Mujinga Kambundji.
The men’s 200m features the Olympic one and two – Botswana’s Letsile Tebogo and Kenny Bednarek of the US – plus Fred Kerley, the US sprinter who finished third over 100m.
Fresh from her 600m world best of 1:21.63 in Berlin on Sunday (1), world champion Mary Moraa of Kenya takes on Tsige Duguma, the Ethiopian who claimed Olympic 800m silver one place ahead of her, and Britain’s 1500m bronze medallist Georgia Bell.
In the men’s javelin, Grenada’s two-time world champion Anderson Peters, a bronze medallist in Paris, will be challenging for a second Diamond League win of the season against Germany’s 2022 European champion Julian Weber and Kenya’s 2015 world champion Julius Yego.
Olympic silver medallist Anna Cockrell of the US lines up in the women’s 400m hurdles, while the men’s event features the silver and bronze medal winners from Paris. Warholm, fresh from his 100m showdown with Duplantis, takes on Brazil’s 2022 world champion Alison dos Santos.
Simon Turnbull for World Athletics
