Thirty-one athletes who earned medals at the World Athletics Championships Doha 2019 – including 11 champions – will return to the Qatari capital on Friday (28) for the second Wanda Diamond League meeting of 2021.
Every scoring discipline on the programme includes at least one world medallist, while three of the disciplines – the women’s triple jump, pole vault and discus – boast the full complement of podium finishers from the 2019 World Championships.
All eyes will be on the triple jump after world champion Yulimar Rojas bounded out to a world-leading 15.43m at the World Athletics Continental Tour meeting in Andujar last week. Her leap is the same distance as her world indoor record and just seven centimetres – which, if you’re reading this on a smartphone, is roughly the width of your device – away from the long-standing world record.
The last time Rojas was in Doha, she won the world title with 15.37m. The Venezuelan will be reunited with the top five finishers from that occasion, including Olympic champion Caterine Ibarguen, world silver medallist Shanieka Ricketts, Commonwealth champion Kimberly Williams, and 2011 world champion Olga Saladukha. USA’s Keturah Orji and Dominica’s Thea LaFond, both of whom have set national records this year, are also in the line-up.
The women’s pole vault is of a similarly high standard and is essentially a replay of the 2019 World Championships, featuring the top eight finishers from that competition.
World champion Anzhelika Sidorova returns to Diamond League action for the first time in almost two years. She vaulted 4.90m during the indoor season but hasn’t competed since then.
World indoor champion Sandi Morris and 2019 Diamond League winner Katerina Stefanidi – both with season’s bests of 4.80m – are also slated to compete, but Katie Nageotte may start as the slight favourite. The US vaulter recently cleared a world-leading PB of 4.93m, moving her up one place to equal fifth on the world all-time list.
All three world medallists in the women’s discus – Yaime Perez, Denia Caballero and Sandra Perkovic – will be in action on Friday. The presence of USA’s Valarie Allman means the line-up contains three women with 70-metre-plus PBs.
Fraser-Pryce aiming for sub-11 territory
On her 100m season debut at the Wanda Diamond League opener in Gateshead, world champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce was hampered by the harsh wet and windy conditions, clocking 11.51.
Conditions in Doha will…
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