The Wanda Diamond League arrives in Europe this week with the Golden Gala Pietro Mennea in Rome boasting one of many strongest fields assembled to date this season.
British followers can have loads to deal with on the Stadio Olimpico on Thursday (June 4), with Olympic 800m champion Keely Hodgkinson and world indoor 1500m champion Georgia Hunter Bell among the many headline sights as they proceed their build-up in direction of the key championships later this summer season.
Hodgkinson steps down in distance phrases – no less than on paper – as she contests the ladies’s 400m towards a world-class subject. The Olympic champion and world indoor record-holder faces an enormous take a look at towards European indoor champion Lieke Klaver, Poland’s Natalia Bukowiecka, American Aaliyah Butler and British record-holder Amber Anning.
Hodgkinson is well the slowest within the subject however is hoping for a giant PB to get into the combo towards the specialist one-lap racers. It should present an intriguing indication of the place Hodgkinson’s velocity is heading because the season gathers momentum and forward of an 800m race in Stockholm a number of days later.
Hunter Bell, in the meantime, strains up within the girls’s 1500m. The Briton loved a breakthrough 2025 marketing campaign and added world indoor gold earlier this yr. In Rome she takes on Ethiopia’s Birke Haylom, winner of the opening Diamond League assembly in Shanghai, plus fellow Brits Laura Muir and Revee Walcott-Nolan are within the line-up.
One other British athlete with podium ambitions is Molly Caudery within the girls’s pole vault. The world indoor champion faces Olympic champion Nina Kennedy and former world champion Sandi Morris in a high-quality contest that ought to produce some spectacular heights.
With Hodgkinson, Hunter Bell and Caudery in motion it means the trio of Brits who gained world indoor gold within the house of half an hour on the ultimate day in Torun earlier this yr are all in motion in Rome.
The ladies’s 200m additionally has a powerful British flavour. Amy Hunt and Dina Asher-Smith are entered alongside arguably the 2 quickest girls on the planet proper now – world champion Melissa Jefferson-Wood and Olympic 100m champion Julien Alfred. American Anavia Battle provides additional depth to what appears to be like like a championship-calibre dash showdown.
Away from the British contingent, one of the eagerly anticipated occasions is the boys’s 100m. The sector options Olympic champions Noah Lyles and Marcell Jacobs, plus Olympic 200m champion Letsile Tebogo. Britain’s Jeremiah Azu, the reigning world indoor 60m champion, can also be among the many entries and might be eager to check himself towards among the greatest names in international sprinting.
The lads’s 800m guarantees to be one other fascinating contest. Former world champion Donavan Brazier continues his comeback and faces Portugal’s Isaac Nader, who arrives in Rome because the reigning world champion over 1500m.
Within the subject occasions, the boys’s shot put is stacked with expertise. Three-time Olympic champion Ryan Crouser leads the entries, whereas fellow international medallists Joe Kovacs, Tom Walsh and Italy’s Leonardo Fabbri guarantee there might be little margin for error. Kovacs is in nice type after a world lead of twenty-two.58m on the Diamond League in Rabat on Sunday.
The lads’s lengthy bounce additionally appears to be like significantly sturdy. Two-time Olympic champion Miltiadis Tentoglou faces world indoor champion Gerson Baldé, Jamaica’s Wayne Pinnock and Tajay Gayle, plus rising Bulgarian expertise Bozhidar Saraboyukov.
Italy can have loads of residence curiosity all through the night. Triple bounce world indoor champion Andy Diaz is among the many favourites in his occasion, whereas Olympic and world medallist Nadia Battocletti is anticipated to obtain big help when she competes within the girls’s 5000m. Battocletti faces world-class opposition together with Bahrain’s Olympic steeplechase champion Winfred Yavi and Ethiopia’s Freweyni Hailu.
The ladies’s hurdles occasions are equally loaded. Danielle Williams, Kendra Harrison, Nadine Visser and Cyrena Samba-Mayela function within the 100m hurdles, whereas Dalilah Muhammad, Anna Cockrell and Jasmine Jones lead the entries for the 400m hurdles.
Rome historically offers one of many highlights of the Diamond League calendar and this yr’s assembly is not any exception. Organisers have assembled a forged that includes greater than 40 Olympic and world champions and over 80 international medallists, underlining the standing of the Golden Gala as one of many premier one-day conferences in athletics.
With Hodgkinson, Hunter Bell, Caudery, Hunt, Asher-Smith, Anning and Azu all in motion, there isn’t a scarcity of British curiosity because the Diamond League season heads into its European part.
Timetable and outcomes could be discovered right here.
TV protection: Stay protection is anticipated to be obtainable on BBC platforms, with ultimate broadcast particulars obtainable by way of BBC Sport listings nearer to the assembly.
