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Wanyonyi, Moraa among Kenyans to light up Monaco DL on Friday
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Reading Time: 2min | Fri. 11.07.25. | 10:05
Olympic champion Wanyonyi will take on a loaded 800m field as Moraa seeks comeback in the 1000m
Six Kenyan athletes will be in action on Friday 11 July night as the Wanda Diamond League series enters its 10th stop at the Meeting Herculis EBS in Monaco.
Olympic champion Emmanuel Wanyonyi will headline the act at the Louis-II Stadium, taking part in a fierce battle in the men’s 800m.
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Wanyonyi, 20, heads to Monaco off the back of two wins on the Diamond League circuit, and will on a potential record-breaking race, aim to fend off tough opposition fronted by the two men who joined him on the Paris podium last year: Canada’s Marco Arop and Algeria’s Djamel Sedjati.
World Champion Arop is undefeated over 800m this year, but he hasn’t contested any Diamond League races so far this season.
Sedjati, the winner in Monaco last year in a meeting record of 1:41.46, finished second to Wanyonyi in Stockholm last month, clocking a season’s best of 1:42.27, his fastest time since the Olympic final.
Wanyonyi’s last appearance was also in the Swedish capital, where he marked his fifth career sub-1:42 clocking, running a world-leading 1:41.95.
Other contenders in the two-lap event will be: Josh Hoey, Bryce Hoppel and Botswana's Tshepiso Masalela.
Elsewhere, Kenya’s duo of Mary Moraa and Nelly Chepchirchir will come under intense pressure from Australia’s Jessica Hull in the women’s 1000m scheduled for 2143 EAT.
Moraa, 25, is yet to gain some level of top-consistency this season, and only finished ninth in her last appearance at the Prefontaine Classic last weekend, albeit in the 800m.
Chepchirchir, in contrast, is enjoying a bright start to her season, where she is yet to lose in any race she has featured this year.
The 22-year-old in her last Diamond League race in Paris took the women’s 1500m title in a time of 3:57.02.
In the men’s 3000m steeplechase - the penultimate event of the night at 2234 EAT - Kenya’s charge against the force that is Morocco’s Soufiane El Bakkali will be led by the duo of World Under 20 Champion Edmund Serem and Commonwealth Champion Abraham Kibiwott.
Serem, only 17, is having a breakout season in the top-level, and notably won the Kip Keino Classic in May.
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Kibiwott, on the other hand, recently came second in the Kenyan Championships, but is yet to place higher than seventh in his other outings this season.
The men’s 5000m will only have one Kenyan athlete - World Championships silver medalist Jacob Krop.
