Diamond League Final Day 2 Overview
Day 2 of the Wanda Diamond League Final in Brussels delivered, arguably, even better than day one. The program was largely a mirror image of day one. If men’s pole vault was on day one, then women’s was on day 2, etc.
The main, 2-hour TV program consisted of seven field events and nine track finals; The gender breakdown was nine women’s and seven men’s events. If you want to be pedantic, only 13 of the 16 finals were in the 2-hour television window, with women’s javelin, men’s shot put, and triple jump part of the warm-up program. If I had one criticism of the evening, it would be that a 2 1/2 hour warm-up program was unnecessarily long. And that, for me, it would have been fine not to have an influencers’ relay race. Or as John McEnroe might have said: “an influencers’ relay race, you cannot be serious!” If I had two criticisms, my second would be: when an athlete is successfully attempting a 2-meter high jump, do we really need the stadium announcer telling the crowd to do a Mexican wave?
I would like to add one other criticism. Danielle Williams, twice world champion at 100 m, finished eighth in the Diamond League rankings. The top 7 were invited to Brussels plus a Belgian athlete with the world ranking of 42; and, in any case, the track has 9 lanes. It’s hard not to think that Williams has been hard done by.
The first track race was the women’s 400, when Marileidy Paulino played her usual game of cat and mouse, letting the person in the lane behind her catch up and the one in front of her pull away to the point that you are certain that she had finally made a misjudgment before powering home in 48.64 to win by half a second from the improving Norwegian Henrietta Jeager. It is a comment on how the event has moved on that Aaliyah Butler ran sub-50 and finished fourth.
There were two women’s middle distance races, which did not disappoint. Audrey Werro won the 800 in 1:54.75, and Klaudia Kazimierska won the 1500 in 3:54.05 a world-leading Polish record, in a race where 8 athletes ran a 3:57 or better.
The least surprising result among the women’s races was Masai Russell winning the 100 hurdles. Eleanor Patterson was a surprise winner of the high jump in a competition which she frankly dominated. She reached 1.99 with a perfect card and then cleared 2.01 on the third attempt. Mahuchikh was second, and Olyslagers third, but both were always playing catch-up and could neither match Patterson’s highest jump nor her four first-time clearances.
Birhanu Balew won the 5000 meters in 12:45.70 with the first 3 all running a PR. Rajindra Campbell won the shot put with 23.08 for a world lead and national record. Kenneth Bednarek won the 200 in 19.62, with sub-20 needed for each of the podium places. Alison dos Santos won the 400h in 46.70, which would seem a good time if dos Santos had not recently run 45.80.
Many athletes will have been delighted with their performances and others disappointed. Not to worry, it all starts again next weekend for many of them with the Ultimate Championship in Budapest.
