by Stuart Weir
This is Stuart Weir’s first piece on the Paris Diamond League, held June 20, 2025, always a huge hit and one of the most important meets on the circuit. We appreciate the eye witness view of our senior European writer, Stuart Weir for his travels this season.
Five predictions
The Diamond League website advised us to look out for five things in Paris:
1 The return of Yaroslava Mahuchikh to the city where she had broken the world record last year.
2 Grant Holloway seeking his first win of the season.
3 Marileidy Paulino taking on a strong field in the women’s 400 meters.
4 Chopra vs Weber: The Rematch
5 A French win, probably by Gabriel Tual in the 800m
Predictions, as we all know, are fraught with difficulty. Mahuchikh was not at her best, having two failures at 1.94 and ultimately having to settle for 1.97. For the second Diamond League in succession, Nicola Olysagers finished first, this time with 2:00, inflicting rare consecutive defeats on the Ukrainian. The ever gracious Mahuchikh said afterwards: “This is absolutely a magical stadium and the atmosphere it is very good here. I am very happy to be here and to compete here again. It is not the result that I was expecting. It is the second competition where, unfortunately, I did not jump 2 metres. I still have a lot of work to do, especially my run up. I should run fast, with a lot of power and speed, but I have been able to use the power and speed that I have”.
Grant Holloway, 60m hurdles world record and Olympic gold medal winner in 2024, saw his disappointing season continue, when he could only finish sixth in the 110m hurdles, which was won by Trey Cunningham in 13.00.
Paulino delivered with a Meeting Record and season’s best 48.81 but was only 0.04 ahead of Salwa Eid Naser.
Neeraj Chopra won the javelin with 88.16 from Julian Weber (87.88) ironically with both throwers achieving their best with their opening throw.
Mohamed Attaoui won the 800 with Tual sixth. However there were two French record with Azeddine Habz winning a 1500m race in 3:27.49 and Jimmy Gressier finishing fourth in the 5000m in a national record 12.51.59.
