© World Athletics
© World Athletics

Kenyans line up in Brussels DL with points and reputations at stake in penultimate round

Reading Time: 2min | Thu. 01.09.22. | 20:59

The race will be the last before the final to be held in Zurich 7-8 September.

The world’s best athletes will head to Brussels for the Allianz Memorial Van Damme on Friday (2) as the Belgian capital hosts the final point-scoring opportunity in the 2022 Wanda Diamond League ahead of the series finale next week.

Many of the qualifying spots for the final have already been claimed, following the recent Diamond League meetings in Lausanne and Monaco. But there are 14 more scoring disciplines being contested in Brussels, all of which loaded with global stars of the sport.

The men’s 800m and women’s 100m, for example, pit two world champions against one another with Kenya's World and Olympic champion Emmanuel Korir leading the loaded 800m field.

Korir will take on the two men who joined him on the podium in Oregon: Djamel Sedjati and Marco Arop. They will also face world 1500m champion Jake Wightman, world indoor champion Mariano Garcia – the Spaniard who recently beat Wightman to the European title in Munich – and Commonwealth champion Wycliffe Kinyamal.

In what looks set to be one of the highest-quality two-lap races of the year, the world-leading mark of 1:43.52 – which has stood since mid-June – should come under threat.

In the 5000m, the two men who took surprising victories over 3000m in Monaco and Stockholm – Burundi’s Thierry Ndikumwenayo and South Sudan’s Dominic Lokinyomo Lobalu – will line up against Kenya’s world silver medallist Jacob Krop, world 10,000m bronze medallist Stanley Mburu, world bronze medallist Oscar Chelimo of Uganda, Ethiopia’s Yomif Kejelcha and US champion Grant Fisher.

Lobalu won the 3000m in Stockholm in 7:29.48, a mark which stood as a world-leading time until Ndikumwenayo bettered it in Monaco with 7:25.93, breaking the Diamond League record as well as the Burundian record.


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