Eliud Kipchoge and Caterine Ibarguen have been named the male and female World Athletes of the Year at the IAAF Athletics Awards 2018, held at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco on Tuesday (4). Kipchoge underlined his status as the world’s most dominant distance runner. The 34-year-old Kenyan won the London Marathon in April in 2:04:17 […]
via KIPCHOGE AND IBARGUEN NAMED 2018 WORLD ATHLETES OF THE YEAR — finixsportsblog
For the first time since 2010, Team Americas has triumphed at the IAAF Continental Cup, held in Ostrava, Czech Republic over the last two days. The competition was exhilarating and fierce between the four continental teams and particularly between the two front-runners, defending champion Team Europe and eventual winner, Team Americas. The Americas led by […]
The 2015 IAAF Diamond League is about to reach its climax, with 13 of the 14 meetings having taken place.
Last Thursday, Zurich staged the first of two finals and there was the coronation of 16 Diamond Race champions. On Friday night (11), the remaining 16 will take their place on the podium in Brussels.
Dominant Diamond Race leaders
Friday‘s Diamond Race action will kick off with the women’s discus.
With five victories and a 15-point lead, Sandra Perkovic has been dominant in this year’s competition. She needs only to compete in Brussels to claim a fourth consecutive Diamond Trophy.
The same is essentially true of Sifan Hassan in the women’s 1500m and Caterine Ibargüen in the women’s triple jump.
Both women hold leads of eight points or more and participation alone is required for them to win the Diamond Race in their respective disciplines.
Nail-biting duels
In the men’s shot put, David Storl and Joe Kovacs are equal on 14 points and have three victories each.
Whoever finishes ahead of the other in Brussels will take the Diamond Trophy and the US $40,000 winner-takes-all cheque, a duel made all the juicier by the fact that Kovacs relieved Storl of his world title in Beijing barely two weeks ago.
Renaud Lavillenie is looking for port-Beijing redemption.
The only athlete to have won the Diamond Race in every year since it was inaugurated in 2010, Lavillenie needs only to win in Brussels to secure a sixth Diamond Trophy.
However, the French world record holder and 2012 Olympic champion only holds a three-point lead over Greece’s Konstantinos Filippidis.
Perhaps the most brilliant double act of the season in any discipline has come in the men’s triple jump.
Christian Taylor and Pedro Pablo Pichardo have delivered a wonderful, season-long battle fro supremacy during 2015. It was Taylor who claimed the major prize when they faced each other in Beijing, but Pichardo still has a two-point lead in the Diamond Race.
In the women’s 200m, meanwhile, one of the heroines of Beijing will be out to rekindle the old fire in the Diamond Race.
Allyson Felix hasn’t had her hands on a Diamond Trophy since she claimed two of them in 2010 but the 400m world champion could change that on Friday.
She leads the women’s 200m Diamond Race, but only by a single point, with Jeneba Tarmoh hot on her heels and 200m world champion Dafne Schippers is also in reach.
Nowhere are the margins closer, however, than in the women’s 100m hurdles.
After six rounds of Diamond League competition, three athletes have shared the spoils exactly among themselves. Jasmin Stowers, Dawn Harper-Nelson and Sharika Nelvis all have two victories and ten points under their belt.
The Diamond Trophy will simply go to whichever of them crosses the line first in Brussels.
Six is the magic number
In six of the Diamond Race events to grace Brussels this year, the winner is close to taking the crown. Bershawn Jackson is five points ahead in the men’s 400m hurdles, while Justin Gatlin, Ruth Beitia, Virginia Nyambura, Francena McCorory, Nijel Amos and Vítezslav Veselý all hold leads of six points.
Amos looks highly likely to claim his second consecutive Diamond Trophy in the men’s 800m, having missed out on the chance to claim gold in Beijing. His six-point lead could be enough, particularly in the absence of David Rudisha.
Beitia’s consistence over the season has been outstanding and, despite a thoroughly competitive field, few would doubt that she could rise to the occasion in the high jump and claim Diamond Race glory.
Likewise, Gatlin, McCorory, Nyambura and Vesely, all of whom have the quality to claim the minimum requirement of a third place in the Belgian capital and transform their six point lead into a Diamond Trophy in the sixth year of the IAAF Diamond League.
Final flourish
The final Diamond Race event of the evening will be arguably the most gripping.
In the men’s 5000m, there has been a different winner in each of the six rounds so far, and five of them – Ben True, Thomas Longosiwa, Caleb Ndiku, Yomif Kejelcha, Hagos Gebrhiwet – will be present in Brussels.
With none of them having reached eight points, however, it is not just these five who can claim the Diamond Trophy.
In theory, any of the athletes on the startlist could win the Diamond Race in Brussels, even those who are currently without any points.
It is by far the most open Diamond Race of the season.
As a final flourish, with some of the most even Diamond Races, some potentially epic duels, and some of the most dominant athletes, the 2015 season finale should be a night of the superlatives in Brussels.
With just three days to go before the start of the 2015 IAAF Diamond League, the excitement is already starting to mount and the traditional opening meeting in the Qatari capital of Doha has already assembled some of the sport’s top stars to get proceedings underway for the sixth year of the series on Friday (15).
Mohammed Aman, Asbel Kiprop, Mo Farah, Christian Taylor, Allyson Felix, Sanya Richards-Ross, Sifan Hassan and Sandra Perkovic are just some of the sport’s star names that will be competing in Doha.
The likes of Kirani James, Jairus Birech, David Oliver, Mutaz Essa Barshim, Eunice Sum, Caterine Ibarguen and Yarisley Silva will be in action in Shanghai just two days later on Sunday (17).
The IAAF is also happy to announce the return of IAAF Fantasy Athletics.
The 2015 edition of the Fantasy Diamond Race is similar to last year and follows the athletes who compete in the 32 event disciplines of the Diamond Race at the 14 meetings of the IAAF Diamond League in 2015.
This provides players with the chance to compare their athletics knowledge against fellow track and field fans from around the world via the overall leader board, and players can also set up private leagues with their friends and colleagues.
Players have to identify nine athletes at each IAAF Diamond League meeting who they think will place highest in their events and, just as with the real Diamond Race itself, points are then awarded to those finishing in the podium positions.
There are unique prizes for those players whose teams have the highest scores at each of the 14 meetings, and for the season winner who accumulates the best overall points score across all meetings
Select your provisional team
The provisional entry lists for the opening meetings in Doha and Shanghai are now available, but it is recommended that players keep checking the start lists as changes sometimes occur and corrections can be made up to the start of a meeting.
Click here to login or register for the 2015 Fantasy Diamond Race
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The IAAF Diamond League is composed of 14 of the best invitational track and field meetings in the world. The meetings are spread across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the USA, and compose the top tier of the IAAF’s global one-day meeting competition structure.
This series of 14 meetings, which began in 2010, showcases 32 event disciplines which are carefully distributed among the meetings.
In each discipline, there is a Diamond Race with points available throughout the 14-meeting season. Winners of each Diamond Race receive a USD$40,000 cash prize and a spectacular Diamond Trophy.
IAAF
2015 IAAF Diamond League calendar
Doha, QAT – 15 May
Shanghai, CHN – 17 May
Eugene, USA – 30 May
Rome, ITA – 4 June
Birmingham, GBR – 7 June
Oslo, NOR – 11 June
New York, USA – 13 June
Paris, FRA – 4 July
Lausanne, SUI – 9 July
Monaco, MON – 17 July
London, GBR – 24-25 July
Stockholm, SWE – 30 July
Zurich, SUI – 3 September
Brussels, BEL – 11 September
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