16 Diamond League winners to be named in Zurich

The official Diamond League 2019 logo [Courtesy]

The first 16 2019 IAAF Diamond League champions will be crowned on Thursday night at the Weltklasse in Zurich in what promises to be a dress rehearsal for the IAAF World Athletics Championships Doha 2019, which get underway in just over one month’s time. 

The field assembled across 16 disciplines – the second 16 will be settled in Brussels next week on Friday (6) - is expected to include five Olympic champions, 11 world champions and 12 defending Diamond League champions, all having earned the right to battle it out for the series crown in a championship-style format adopted two years ago which has seen the first 12 Diamond League meetings of the season employed as qualifiers for this week’s finals.

That means that every athlete arrives at their respective final with an equal opportunity of winning their discipline’s Diamond Trophy and its accompanying US$50,000 winner’s top prize - and this year, a wildcard entry for next month’s IAAF World Athletics Championships Doha 2019.

That winner-takes-all set-up produced several dramatic surprises the past two years and almost certainly will again in Zurich on Thursday and in the second final in Brussels next weekend.

The women’s 400m hurdles will be among the evening’s most anticipated races, featuring Olympic champion Dalilah Muhammad in her first race since her sensational 52.20 world record run at the US Championships on 28 July. What has she been up to for the past month? We’ll soon find out, but you can expect her to be well-prepared in her bid to capture a third straight Diamond Trophy.

She’ll face Sydney McLaughlin, who finished second in Des Moines in 52.88, the second-fastest performance of her young career. Muhammad, 29, holds a 4-1 edge lifetime over the 20-year-old.