Star names to descend on London Diamond League this weekend
Reading Time: 3min | Thu. 16.07.26. | 10:50
Sprinter Julian Alfred and pole-vault phenom Mondo Duplantis will also headline the list at London Stadium
Deep fields full of global medallists and world record-holders will light up the Novuna London Athletics Meet when Wanda Diamond League action continues in the UK capital on Saturday, 18 July.
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Emmanuel Wanyonyi races the 800m a week on from becoming the fastest 1000m runner in history. His fellow world record-holder Ja’Kobe Tharp headlines the 110m hurdles, and Josh Kerr goes on the hunt for a world record of his own.
Julien Alfred, Mondo Duplantis, Keely Hodgkinson, Femke Broeders-Bol and Yaroslava Mahuchikh are among the many other world and Olympic champions who will be in London as the race towards the Diamond League Final in Brussels, and the World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest in September intensifies.
Kenya’s Olympic and world 800m champion Wanyonyi improved the world 1000m record by 0.13 during the Diamond League meeting in Monaco, running 2:11.83. Great Britain’s 2022 world 1500m champion Jake Wightman chased him home in 2:12.77 to move to fifth on the world all-time list and they both run in London.
Their strong opposition includes Britain’s Max Burgin, who handed Wanyonyi one of his two Diamond League 800m defeats this season in Rabat. Mark English, Peter Bol, Bryce Hoppel and Ben Pattison are also in action.
“I don’t want to talk about the world record in the 800m,” Wanyonyi said after his Monaco performance, referring to David Rudisha’s mark of 1:40.91 set in the same London stadium almost 14 years ago. “I first want to run fast and improve my personal best. Let me keep quiet, actions speak louder than words.”
Olympic champion Hodgkinson targets her first win of the season in an 800m that pits her against Ethiopia’s Olympic silver medallist Tsige Duguma, while Dutch star Broeders-Bol continues her journey from the 400m hurdles to the 800m.
Hodgkinson sits second on this season’s world top list with the national record of 1:54.33 she ran during the Diamond League in Stockholm and she clocked 1:56.73 in Eugene despite feeling the effects of a fall she suffered the day before she flew to the US. Meanwhile, world 400m hurdles champion Broeders-Bol ran 1:55.60 in Paris.
Kerr has made no secret of his plan to attack the long-standing world mile record on home soil. The 2023 world 1500m champion and two-time Olympic medallist will be paced by his training partner Brannon Kidder as he targets 3:42 as part of ‘project 222’ – the number of seconds he hopes to complete the distance in to improve on the world record of 3:43.13 set by Hicham El Guerrouj in Rome in 1999.
Kerr currently sits sixth on the world all-time list with the British record of 3:45.34 he set in Eugene in 2024 and in London he will line up alongside the athlete two places ahead of him on that all-time list – USA’s Olympic medallist Yared Nuguse, who ran 3:43.97 in 2023. Joining them in the field are Mohamed Abdilaahi, who ran a world lead of 7:25.77 to win the 3000m in Shanghai in May, and his German compatriot Robert Farken, plus Ethan Strand.
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The 3000m pits Australia’s Olympic 1500m silver medallist Jessica Hull, fresh off pacing Agnes Ngetich to the third-fastest performance in history (8:08.95) in Monaco, against her compatriots Linden Hall and Georgia Griffith, Ethiopia’s Medina Eisa and Hirut Meshesha, and Great Britain’s Megan Keith and Laura Muir.
©World Athletics.