Zurich Diamond League Preview: The Olympic Rematches We've All Been Waiting For

By Paul Hof-Mahoney

This year’s Zurich Diamond League, the penultimate meet on the circuit before the Diamond League Final next weekend in Brussels, is one of the most hotly anticipated competitions of the year. While many eyes will be drawn to two big competitions happening today – a stacked women’s pole vault field doing battle in Zurich Main Station and the fascinating 100m duel between pole vault world record holder Mondo Duplantis and 400m hurdles world record holder Karsten Warholm – Thursday’s main slate offers plenty of thrilling storylines and races as well.

The meet will be streamed on Peacock (subscription required) for U.S. fans beginning at 2pm E.T. and on the World Athletics YouTube channel for most other countries. You can follow along with live results and a full entry list here.

Here are some of the athletes and events to keep a close eye on:

The Olympic Rematch We’ve All Been Waiting For

September 5th has been circled on the calendars of track fans across the world for three weeks now, in large part because of one race: the men’s 1500m. The anticipation is always heightened whenever Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Josh Kerr are set to square off, but Olympic gold and bronze medals from the American duo of Cole Hocker and Yared Nuguse added two more names into the drama surrounding this event. Tomorrow afternoon, these four will all face off for the first time since a legendary Olympic final in Paris. 

The quartet has seen varying levels of activity since they last met. Kerr, who took silver in Paris, hasn’t raced since the 1500m final, which is not that much of a surprise. His last Diamond League 1500m was at this meet last August, where he lost his first race as World champion to Nuguse. Speaking of Nuguse, the bronze medalist from Paris got back to racing Sunday with the second-fastest World Athletics-recognized road mile ever in Dusseldorf, running 3:51.9. Hocker has raced a Diamond League, but he placed second to Ingebrigtsen in Lausanne and finished over two seconds slower than his Olympic record. 

Now we finally come to Ingebrigtsen, who got some Olympic redemption by dominating the 5000m field en route to his third straight global title at the distance. Once he got back on the Diamond League circuit, he reestablished his dominance, taking the win over Hocker in Lausanne as previously mentioned, and then obliterating Daniel Komen’s nearly 28-year-old 3000m record by over three seconds. In the nearly three years since finishing second at this meet in September of 2021, Ingebrigtsen’s only loss at a Diamond League came in this year’s Bowerman Mile, where he claimed that injuries he had suffered during the spring played a big role in his loss to Kerr. This is the style of race that the Norwegian star thrives in and is nigh unbeatable in, but this is also the kind of field that has the guys to flip that trend. 

The start list boasts some big names even outside of the big four. Timothy Cheruiyot had a disappointing Olympics, but he’s finished runner-up to Ingebrigtsen in both Diamond Leagues he’s contested this year. He was also the man that beat Ingebrigtsen in the aforementioned 2021 edition of the Weltklasse. Elliot Giles will be toeing the line as a newly-minted world record holder (subject to the World Athletics ratification process, blah blah blah) after finishing just ahead of Nuguse at that road race in Germany last weekend. Narve Gilje Nordås, Niels Laros, Azeddine Habz, and Olli Hoare all enter Thursday’s race boasting sub-3:30 credentials as well.

No, This Is The Olympic Rematch We’ve All Been Waiting For!

Neither 100m Olympic champion Julien Alfred or Olympic silver medalist Sha’Carri Richardson have raced since t

he Games wrapped up, and we should count ourselves incredibly lucky that, in a season where so many sprinters have opted not to race post-Olympics, they have decided to give us at least one more show.

This will be only the fifth time these two sprinting superstars have squared off in a non-qualifying 100m race, and the scorecard currently sits at two apiece. Both women picked up some more Olympic hardware since the last time they saw each other, with Alfred winning 200m silver and Richardson anchoring the gold-medal winning American 4x100m squad, but none of that will matter for the (hopefully) far less than 11 seconds they’ll be racing tomorrow. The straightaway in Zurich has produced some impressive times in the past, as Elaine Thompson-Herah and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce each ran 10.65 here in 2021 and 2022, respectively, and Yohan Blake holds the meet record on the men’s side at 9.76. I’m not necessarily saying to expect something that fast, but never be surprised by what these two can do when they step out on the track.   

While Alfred and Richardson are obviously the headliners, this field is ridiculously good. The slowest season’s best of the nine entrants is 10.93, which sits at T-18th in the world this year. Two women coming off big wins are Great Britain’s Dina Asher-Smith, who ran a season’s best of 10.88 into a headwind to win in Lausanne, and Jamaican rising star Tia Clayton, the winner of a tight, wind-aided race in Silesia at a time of 10.83. Mujinga Kambundji, the Swiss record holder at 60m, 100m and 200m, will be looking to impress the home crowd and improve upon her third-place finish two weeks ago in Lausanne.

Can Anyone Stop The Letsile Tebogo Express?

Letsile Tebogo will come into Letzigrund Stadium with one of the most impressive months of sprinting imaginable in his rear view mirror. In August, Tebogo broke his own national record in the Olympic 100m final, won Olympic 200m gold, won Olympic 4x400m

silver and threw down one of the fastest splits in history. He then claimed a trio of Diamond League wins that were equal parts convincing and entertaining. This week, he steps back up to the 200m and is set to go head-to-head with a stacked field. 

The presence of four Americans catches your eye when looking at the start list, especially since the slowest PB among them is Fred Kerley’s 19.76 (T-28th all-time), but Tebogo should still be able to enter this race with all the confidence in the world. He beat Kerley and Erriyon Knighton in Lausanne, and then beat Knighton and Olympic silver medalist Kenny Bednarek in Silesia (and just for good measure he beat Kerley in the 100m in Rome). The fourth American entered, Courtney Lindsey, is actually the only man to beat the Motswana in the 200m this year, running 19.71 at the Kip Keino Classic in April. However, Lindsey hasn’t broken 20 seconds since that race, so it would require an impressive return to form in order for him to beat Tebogo.

The man with the best chance to dethrone the Olympic champ could prove to be Alexander Ogando of the Dominican Republic, who’s gone sub-20 in both of his races since Paris, with the most recent being a runner-up finish to Tebogo in Silesia, where he set a Dominican record of 19.86. He might be able to come away with another PB, but in all likelihood the thing to watch will be what antics Tebogo pulls out as he nears the finish line.

Other Highlights:

- While his 100m race today is what will draw the most eyes, Duplantis goes again tomorrow in an incredibly deep pole vault field. Last time out, he, Sam Kendricks, and Emmanouil Karalis combined for the first competition in history with three men clearing six meters. Since then, Kendricks cleared 6.01m in Berlin this weekend with a clean sheet up until three more attempts at the would-be American record of 6.08m. We should have another good one in store Thursday.

- Coming off a world best in the 600m of 1:21.63, Mary Moraa steps back into her signature event to take on a phenomenal 800m field. Olympic silver medalist Tsige Duguma has racked up seventh- and eighth-place finishes at her two Diamond League appearances this year and will be looking to flip the script against a field that also includes the British duo of Jemma Reekie and Georgia Bell, U.S. champ Nia Akins, and Olympic fourth-placer Shafiqua Maloney. 

- Double Olympic champion Beatrice Chebet will take to the track for the first time since Paris in the 5000m. Given that she’s already the third-fastest woman in history in this event and she’ll be pushed by Ethiopians Ejgayehu Taye and Tsige Gebreselama, there’s at least a chance we see Chebet break another iconic barrier and become the first woman to cover 12.5 laps in less than 14 minutes.

- Both sprint hurdle races are stacked, as usual. The entire Olympic podium of Grant Holloway, Rasheed Broadbell, and Daniel Roberts square off again on the men’s side, and the same is true for the women’s podium of Masai Russell, Cyréna Samba-Mayela, and Jasmine Camacho-Quinn.

- The Great European Shot Put Tour Of 2024™ makes its third stop, as Ryan Crouser, Joe Kovacs, Leo Fabbri, and Rajindra Campbell go head-to-head for the third straight Diamond League. Many of these men will also compete in two smaller meets in Zagreb and Bellinzona in between tomorrow’s meet and the Diamond League Final in Brussels.

Thanks for reading! Tune in to the Zurich Diamond League on September 5 at 2pm E.T. and follow along with us on Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube for live coverage, interviews, analysis, and more.