This is the first story for the first day of the 2024 Diamond League Finals in Brussels on September 13, 2024.
Highlights from Day 1 of the Diamond League Finals
Diamond League Finals, A culmination of 14 events spread over 6 months as athletes battled to qualify for that final… except it didn’t happen it seems so. An athletics reporter told me before the program began. “Diamond League Finals, but who really cares?” The event felt like an anti-climax in the wake of such a glittering Olympics. The number of Olympic champions who refused to quit seemed to confirm this.
Then there was the absurdity of setting up two specific races for Sydney McLaughlin-LeVron to be in the program, running in sweatpants against a mediocre field. Even the announcement that he was nominated required clarification the next day from Diamond League management to make it clear that he was participating in the pre-event rather than the DL finals.
Among the Olympic champions who qualified and accepted their invitation to compete for the diamond was Mondo Duplantis, who won the pole vault in 5.92 and then cleared 6.11 to give the crowd something to cheer about. Similarly, Paulino of Marelli repeated his Olympic victory, albeit 1.2 seconds slower than in Paris.
Yaroslava, resident of Belgium Mahuchych, who was forced to flee his native Ukraine, won the high jump on countback from Nikola Olislagers, and the same athletes finished in the top four in Paris. Valarie Allman won the discus, winning on more or less the same field as in Paris.
The men’s 100m was won by Akeem Blake of Jamaica in 9.93 with Christian Coleman second in 10.00, times reflecting a temperature of 55F or 13C. It should be noted that the two best players in the finals of the Olympic Games, Noah Lyles and Kishan Thomson, were not in Brussels. Fred Kerley, third in Paris, was also third in Brussels.
In the absence of Grant Holloway, Sasha Joya, who did not make it to the finals of the 2024 Olympics, won the 110m hurdles in 13.16 minutes from Lorenzo Simonelli in a rare European 1-2 event traditionally dominated by the Americans. The jury is out on whether Joya is as European as she was born in Australia, has Zimbabwean citizenship and is French.
Berihu Aregavi won the 5000 in 12:43.66 with Hagos Gebrhivet and Haile Bekele of Ethiopia 1-2-3. This is becoming a recurring theme, but Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen is absent, choosing to run the 1,500 instead. Jakob won the 1,500 in 3:30.37, with Olympic champion Cole Hawker third.
With Kelly Hodgkinson ending her season with injury, Mary Mora won the 800m in 1:56.56, a race where the top seven finished under 2 minutes.
The seemingly invincible Miltiadis Tentoglu (8:15) was the second victim post-Olympic loss to Tajai Gale (8:28). Sarah Mitton, not in the medals in Paris, won the DL final;
