After a month-long hiatus that included the Commonwealth Games, the Diamond League track and field circuit resumed today with a special men’s pole vault “city event” in the heart of Lausanne, Switzerland. Swedish star Armand Duplantis, winner of back-to-back Olympic gold medals and three straight world championships, won it with a meet-record vault of 6.21 metres before failing on his crowd-pleasing attempts at 6.32m, which would have broken his own world record by one centimetre.
Today’s festivities kicked off the final stretch of the global track and field season, which features the Diamond League Final and the brand-new World Athletics Ultimate Championship.
Here’s a roadmap to what’s coming up.
Star-studded 100m highlights Diamond League’s return
Only three regular-season meets remain before the Diamond League champions are crowned at the Final in Brussels on Sept. 4 and 5. And two of them take place over the next few days.
Today’s pole-vault competition was an amuse-bouche for Lausanne’s main event on Friday at Stade Olympique de la Pontaise.
The menu there includes a delicious men’s 800m matchup between all three medallists from the 2024 Paris Olympics: Kenya’s Emmanuel Wanyonyi, Canada’s Marco Arop and Algeria’s Djamel Sedjati. The 200m races feature reigning Olympic men’s champion Letsile Tebogo of Botswana, two-time women’s world champ Shericka Jackson of Jamaica and Great Britain’s Amy Hunt, the silver medallist at last year’s worlds.
You can watch the meet live from 2-4 p.m. ET on CBC Gem or catch a replay on the CBC TV network from 3-5 p.m. ET. The men’s 800 is at 2:40 p.m. ET, and the 200s go at 2:15 p.m. ET (women’s) and 3:41 p.m. ET (men’s). Here’s the full schedule.
On Saturday, the action shifts to Poland’s massive Silesian Stadium, which will host some of the biggest names in the sport over two days of competition.
Day one brings a handful of field events — including the women’s shot put. Canada’s Sarah Mitton, coming off her second consecutive Commonwealth Games gold medal and ranked No. 3 in the world, takes on reigning world champion Jessica Schilder of the Netherlands and two-time world champ Chase Jackson of the United States.
Host Perdita Felicien and Aaron Brown give their predictions for one of the biggest races of the season, which will feature Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, Sha’Carri Richardson and Julien Alfred.
Then things really get going on Sunday. It features Canada’s twin Olympic and world hammer throw champions Ethan Katzberg and Camryn Rogers, who both won gold at the Commonwealth Games, while Andre De Grasse competes in a super-sized men’s 100m. Unlike most Diamond League races, this one has a qualifying round and is stuffed with 18 competitors, including reigning world champ Oblique Seville of Jamaica, back-to-back Olympic silver medallist Kenny Bednarek of the United States and former world champ Christian Coleman of the U.S.
Among the other attractions on Sunday is Norwegian distance-running star Jakob Ingebrigtsen in the men’s 1,500m. The two-time Olympic gold medallist made a triumphant return from Achilles surgery at this month’s European championships, winning his fourth consecutive 5,000m title. There’s also a tasty men’s 400m hurdles matchup between Norway’s Karsten Warholm and American Rai Benjamin, the last two Olympic champs.
But the race that has track nerds buzzing is the women’s 100m. The Olympic-calibre field (a rarity on the Diamond League circuit, where the top sprinters often duck each other to maximize their prize money) includes Saint Lucia’s Julien Alfred, American Melissa Jefferson-Wooden and New Zealand’s Zoe Hobbs — the reigning Olympic, world and Commonwealth Games champions, respectively. Oh, and throw in American star Sha’Carri Richardson (the 2023 world champ and 2024 Olympic silver medallist) and Jamaicans Shericka Jackson and Tina Clayton, the runner-up at last year’s worlds.
Here’s more on the high-wattage women’s 100m and what it means for the sport from CBC Sports contributor Morgan Campbell. And here’s a breakdown from Perdita Felicien and Aaron Brown on the latest episode of CBC Sports’ Trackside.
You can watch Sunday’s action live on CBC Gem from 10 a.m. ET to noon ET or catch a replay on CBC TV at 2 p.m. ET. The men’s 100m final is at 11:11 a.m. ET, and the women’s 100 closes out the meet at 11:53 a.m. ET. Here’s the full schedule.
Diamond League Final spots up for grabs
A season-long points chase decides the qualifiers for each event at the Final in Brussels, where the points go out the window and a one-off competition determines who hoists the Diamond Trophy and collects the top cash prize (either $30,000 or $60,000 US, depending on the event).
In the field events, the top six in the standings advance to the Final. On the track, it’s the top eight for the 100m-800m distances and the top 10 for the 1,500m and longer. But the organizers have some wiggle room to get a prominent athlete in as a wild card.
Last year, Arop and Mitton were the only two Canadians to reach the Final in Zurich. They both finished third.
Right now, it looks like they could be Canada’s lone finalists again. Mitton ranks second in the women’s shot put standings and has already clinched her ticket. Arop has not quite secured his spot, but he should be able to take care of that Friday as he sits second in the men’s 800m behind Wanyonyi, who’s going for his fourth consecutive Diamond trophy.
De Grasse looks like he’ll miss out. He’s 12th in the 200m and 18th in the 100. Katzberg and Rogers would surely qualify for the Final, but the hammer throw is not part of the official Diamond League program (it occasionally appears as a sort of exhibition event) and is thus not included in the Final.
Ultimate Championship debuts
With no world championships on the calendar in 2026 (they’re held in odd-numbered years only) the global track and field season will culminate with the inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championship on Sept. 11-13 in Budapest, a week after the Diamond League Final.
Track and field’s world governing body is billing this event as a place where “only the world’s very best athletes” will compete to “decide who is truly the best on the planet.” The plan is to stage it every two years, including Olympic years. An eye-catching $10 million US in prize money is up for grabs, including $150,000 for the winner of each individual event.
Those figures dwarf what’s offered at the Diamond League Final, which has an overall purse of $2.24M, and the Ultimate Championship is more exclusive than the world championships. There are no qualifying rounds in any of the field events, the 1,500m or the 5,000m, while everything between 100m and 800m begins with the semifinals, making for smaller fields. Automatic invitations go out to the reigning Olympic and world champions in each event, plus the winners from the Diamond League Final the week before. The rest of the spots are determined by a qualifying system that runs until Sept. 3.
Looking at the top Canadians, Katzberg has automatically qualified as the reigning Olympic and world men’s hammer throw champion. However, there’s no women’s hammer throw event for some reason, leaving Rogers out even though her credentials match Katzberg’s.
On the track, Arop ranks second in the men’s 800m standings, so he’ll get in. De Grasse and Aaron Brown are 12th and 13th in the men’s 200m, while Christopher Morales Williams is 13th in the men’s 400m, putting them in position to make the field of 16.
Unfortunately, there are no men’s or women’s 4x100m relays, so we won’t get to see De Grasse’s Olympic-champion squad compete. But Canada did secure a spot in the mixed 4×100 via this year’s World Relays, where it captured the silver medal.
For more on the Ultimate Championship, here’s a handy FAQ from World Athletics.
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