Many of the world’s top athletes are headed to Silesia, Poland on Sunday, Aug. 25 to continue fighting to qualify for the Diamond League Final taking place in Brussels on Sept. 13 and 14, including Canada’s Moh Ahmed, who narrowly missed the podium in the men’s 10,000m event at the Paris 2024 Olympics just a few weeks ago, and fell near the end of the 5,000m final, dashing any hopes of an Olympic medal.
Ahmed will race the 3,000m, a change from his usual 5,000m and 10,000m events. Norway’s 5,000m Olympic champion, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, will also be in the 3,000m, alongside Olympic 5,000m silver medallist Ronald Kwemoi of Kenya and bronze medallist Grant Fisher of the U.S., who is Ahmed’s former teammate at Bowerman Track Club in Eugene, Ore.
2023 world champion and Olympic silver medallist Josh Kerr of Great Britain and Olympic bronze medallist Yared Nuguse of the U.S. will join Hocker and Ingebrigtsen again at Zürich Diamond League on Sept. 5, reuniting the Olympic quad that gave the world the most epic (and fastest) Olympic 1,500m final in history. The four men will battle for a Diamond League title and USD $30,000 in prize money.
Olympic 3,000m steeplechase finalist Jean-Simon Desgagnés will compete in that event, fresh off his 13th-place finish in the Olympic final two weeks ago.
Canada’s own Olympic silver medallist, Marco Arop, will face off against Olympic champion Emmanuel Wanyonyi of Kenya for the second time in three days, after being denied the win again in Lausanne. Wanyonyi held off the Canadian, clocking a blistering 1:41.11 to run a new world lead, Diamond League Record and another new personal best (after running a PB in the Olympic final). Arop ran his second-fastest 800m ever, to clock 1:41.72.
Team Netherland’s 2023 world champion Femke Bol, fresh off her fourth straight Lausanne Diamond League win and a new meet record of 52.25, will go head-to-head with Olympic silver medallist Anna Cockrell of the U.S. for the first time since Paris. Bol is seeking redemption after a disappointing third-place finish at Paris 2024.
Karsten Warholm will compete in the men’s 400m hurdles, fighting to re-establish his dominance in the event after settling for silver in Paris.
Two-time Olympic, world indoor and world outdoor champion Mondo Duplantis will compete again in Silesia; Sweden’s pole vault star is fresh off a new world record of 6.25 m from Paris and a Diamond League win in Lausanne on Thursday, where he demolished the field by 23 cm and jumped to a new meet record of 6.15m.
You can catch all of the action live on Sunday on cbcsports.ca, starting at 10:00 a.m. ET. For more information on the Silesia Diamond League schedule, click here.
