Olympic middle-distance champions Faith Kipyegon and Emmanuel Wanyonyi will be up against the athletes who joined them on the Paris podium when they line up for the second day of the Wanda Diamond League Final in Brussels on Saturday (14).
The first 16 of the 32 Diamond disciplines will be contested on Friday at the Allianz Memorial Van Damme, while the rest will take place on Saturday in the Belgian capital.
Kenyan duo Kipyegon and Wanyonyi are among the 25 Olympic gold medallists who will compete in Brussels over two days.
Multiple world and Olympic champion Kipyegon has been unbeaten in 1500m finals since June 2021, but many competitors in the discipline – such as Olympic silver and bronze medallist Jessica Hull and Georgia Bell, both of whom will be in Brussels – have started to adopt the same fearless approach to racing that the world record-holder possesses.
Along with the three Olympic medallists, Saturday’s race also features world indoor champion Freweyni Hailu, world road mile champion Diribe Welteji and their fellow Ethiopian Birke Haylom.
Four of the men who have come within one second of the world’s 800m record this season will toe the line once more in Brussels, which could be the final opportunity to record a super quick time this year.
Wanyonyi vs Marco Arop, Winfred Yavi vs Peruth Chemutai
Olympic champion Wanyonyi will be joined by world champion and Olympic silver medallist Marco Arop, Olympic bronze medallist Djamel Sedjati and European champion Gabriel Tual, all of whom have bettered 1:42 in recent months, some of them more than once.
Two-time Commonwealth champion Wycliffe Kinyamal and world bronze medallist Ben Pattison add further depth to the field.
Like the women’s 1500m and men’s 800m, the women’s 3000m steeplechase will also have the full set of Olympic medallists in action.
World and Olympic champion Winfred Yavi will take on 2021 Olympic champion Peruth Chemutai and Olympic bronze medallist Faith Cherotich.
The last clash between the trio resulted in Yavi clocking a world-leading 8:44.39, just 0.07 shy of the world record, with Chemutai moving to third on the world all-time list with 8:48.03. With the world record now within touching distance, there’s a chance they could attack it again in Brussels.
Will Beatrice Chebet break the 5000m world record?
Double Olympic champion Beatrice Chebet also recently came close to a world record. The Kenyan ran 14:09.52 over 5000m in Zurich, the seventh fastest performance in history, and she’ll be all too aware that the current world record was set in last year’s Diamond League Final.
In Brussels she’ll face Ethiopian trio Tsigie Gebreselama, Ejegayehu Taye and Medina Eisa.
Tebogo and Richardson ready to light up the track
Since winning the Olympic 200m title in Paris, Botswana’s Letsile Tebogo hasn’t lost an individual race. He notched up victories in Lausanne (19.64), Silesia (19.83), Zurich (19.55) and Brescia (20.66), as well as winning over 100m in Rome (9.87).
The 21-year-old will target one more triumph on the track in Brussels in a field brimming with leading US sprinters, including Olympic silver medallist Kenny Bednarek, world silver medallist Erriyon Knighton and 2022 world 100m champion Fred Kerley.
