Lausanne Diamond League Recap: Highlights, Takeaways, Biggest Moments

By Paul Hof-Mahoney

We’re so back.

The first Diamond League in a little over a month was held this evening in Lausanne, Switzerland, and these athletes came back from the Olympic-induced hiatus ready to play. Track and field fans saw a great combination of both champions proving why they’re still the best and those who came up short in Paris proving they’re still a force to be reckoned with. 

Full results can be found here. We’ve also got interviews with many of the competing athletes up on the CITIUS MAG YouTube channel.

Here are a handful of the best highlights from this afternoon in Lausanne:

Two words: Emmanuel Wanyonyi.

Okay– we have to say more than that. 20-year-old Kenyan Emmanuel Wanyonyi won the 800m tonight in 1:41.11, shaving 0.08 seconds off his PB from his gold medal performance in Paris and equalling Wilson Kipketer as the second-fastest man in history. 

This race was paced as a world record attempt, and Marco Arop came through the first lap as the fastest non-pacer in 49.6, 0.7 seconds faster than Wanyonyi was at the bell in Paris. This was where things got a bit dicey, as Arop had to swing way wide to get around French pacer Ludovic le Meur in the first few meters of the second lap. After Arop slotted back in, Wanyonyi was still in second, but he was a bit behind Arop after not sticking as tightly to the pacer. 

On the back straight, Arop stayed to the outside of lane one, giving Wanyonyi the room he needed to move into the lead. The Olympic champ continued to pull away from Arop over the final 300m and crossed the line in another absurdly fast time. He has set a new PB in each of his last four races (excluding the heats and semis in Paris), which is a really hard thing to do when you’re already running 1:41s! This is the fourth time this year the 20-year-old has dipped under 1:42, which is the most ever in a single season. He has already equalled Kipketer for the second-most 1:41 races in history, behind only David Rudisha’s seven. 

Arop didn’t quite have the same close he showcased in Paris, but he can’t be too upset after once again finishing second in historically fast fashion, running 1:41.72 – a time only six other men in history have ever run. 

This race was not as deep as the Olympic final or either of the previous two Diamond Leagues, but we must remain vigilant and not become desensitized to these fast times. Gabriel Tual and Bryce Hoppel both running in the mid-1:42s and finishing third and fourth is still crazy! 

Back to business as usual for Ingebrigtsen

If there’s one thing Jakob Ingrebrigtsen knows how to do, it’s win Diamond League races. But with another matchup against Olympic champ Cole Hocker on the docket today, it felt like there was a chance we would finally see a serious challenge to the Norwegian’s dominance in paced races on the circuit. Today was not that day, however. 

With the Wavelights set to Ingebrigtsen’s 3:26.73 European record from last month in Monaco, he led the field behind the rabbits through 700m in 1:37.8, half a second slower than the race in Paris (where he admitted he took the race out too hot). At about the 1000m mark, there was a clear lead pack of Ingebrigtsen, Hobbs Kessler, and Hocker. The front 3 hit the bell at 2:33.21, a bit faster than they came through the bell in Paris. With Hocker less than a half-second back and within striking distance given his hallmark kick, it wasn’t necessarily looking great for Ingebrigtsen.

There was very little movement among the leaders through the next 200m, but Ingebrigtsen was able to find the extra injection of speed he was missing in the Olympic final, opening up a gap around the final turn on the Americans as Hocker moved ahead of Kessler. 

In that Olympic final, Ingebrigtsen saw the field creep up on him around the bend and three men pass him in the final 100m. The difference between his fourth-place finish two weeks ago and his win tonight was that he closed his final 200m in 26.8 in Lausanne, a far cry from his 27.3 second close from Paris. He seemed to glide down the homestretch as Hocker, whose final 200m of 28.3 was two seconds slower than what he managed in Paris, couldn’t hold on this time.

Ingebrigtsen crossed the line in 3:27.83, the third-fastest time of his career and a time that only nine men in history have managed to surpass. It’s not quite the world record that some fans may be hoping for to close out this year, but he’ll have another chance at that in Zurich, where the rest of the Olympic podium will join Ingebrigtsen and Kerr.

Hocker came through in 3:29.85, the second sub-3:30 race of his career, and Kessler held off a hard close from Timothy Cheruiyot for third. Let’s not forget that, before Paris, 3:29 and 3:30 would’ve been huge breakout races for the young Americans – but they’ve now burdened themselves with even higher expectations. Jochem Vermeulen finished sixth in 3:31.74, setting a Belgian record in the process.

Olympic champs provide strong encores in the field (and on the streets)

The first action from this meet actually took place yesterday evening, with a waterfront men’s pole vault competition in the streets of Lausanne. It was a field that contained six Olympic finalists, and it unsurprisingly ended with Mondo Duplantis coming out on top. There were five men that recorded clean sheets through 5.82m, which ended up in a three-way tie for third. Olympic silver medalist Sam Kendricks equalled Duplantis with a first-attempt clearance at 5.92m, but once again couldn’t quite get over that 6.00m bar. 

Duplantis cleared at least 6.00m for the 10th time this season, and then went on to clear 6.15m on his third attempt to set a new meet record. It was his own meet record that he broke, as Duplantis owns 10 of the 15 meet records across the Diamond League. 

Inside the stadium today, Yaroslava Mahuchikh looked completely in control of the women’s high jump competition. Against the other three (let’s not forget the shared bronze) medalists from Paris, the world record holder easily took the win, not missing a bar until she was the only jumper remaining. That was made easier by the fact that she didn’t enter the competition until the bar was at 1.92m and only needed first-time clearances at three heights to win. 

In the final jumping event of the program, Miltiadis Tengoglou continued his winning ways on the long jump runway with a 8.06m effort on the final jump of the competition to extend his winning streak to eight competitions. The marks were a bit lackluster for a field that contained several of the heavy-hitters from the Olympic final, but having the whole top eight be separated by less than a foot made for fantastic drama.

Other highlights:

- Olympic bronze medalist Jasmine Camacho-Quinn is having a great week. After getting engaged and celebrating her 28th birthday, she picked up her 12th career Diamond League 100mH win, equalling her season’s best of 12.35. NCAA champion Grace Stark finished second in her Diamond League debut in 12.38.

- Chase Jackson bounced back from a disappointing Olympic debut in the best way imaginable, taking down a stacked field by well over a meter with a best mark of 20.64m. The two-time World champ posted the three best throws of the competition, including two over 20m. Her mark is only 4 centimeters off third-place finisher Sarah Mitton’s world lead and 12cm off Jackson’s own American record from last September. The Chase Jackson Revenge Tour is on, and it’s going to be a scary couple of weeks for her competitors.

- Matthew Hudson-Smith and Letsile Tebogo carried momentum from stellar Olympic appearances into their first races since the Paris 4x400s wrapped up. Hudson-Smith took down a strong 400m field in 43.96, his third time running in the 43s this season, and Tebogo held off the American duo of Erriyon Knighton and Fred Kerley to win the 200m in 19.64. With Noah Lyles announcing earlier this week that his 2024 season is over, all eyes will be on Tebogo in the coming weeks to see just how fast he can go.

- Femke Bol took down her own 400mH meet record in her first race since a very busy week-and-a-half in Paris, winning in 52.25. Rushell Clayton stuck right with Bol through 300m, but faded a bit over the closing stages. She still held on to second in 53.32, leading a Jamaican 2-3-4.

The next Diamond League competition will be in Silesia, Poland, this Sunday, August 25th. Stay tuned to our website and social media channels for previews, coverage, and interviews from the next big meet on the circuit over the next few days.