After an explosive start in Asia and Africa, the Wanda Diamond League season headed west to Europe and the USA in June and early July.
For the world’s biggest names, meetings in Stockholm, Paris and Eugene meant more chances to strut their stuff ahead and get in championship-winning shape ahead of the World Championships in Tokyo.
They did just that, as the season really took off with a flurry of world records to mark the halfway stage of the campaign.
Stockholm: Duplantis soars on home soil
Prior to the 2025 outdoor season, Mondo Duplantis had broken the pole vault world record 11 times, in eight different cities and at three different Wanda Diamond League meetings.
He was a two-time Olympic gold medallist, a four-time Diamond League champion and on the verge of claiming his fourth world title.
Yet there was one major prize which still eluded the Swedish sensation: a world record at his home Diamond League meeting in Stockholm.
Duplantis had soared in Stockholm before, breaking Diamond League records and setting new outdoor world bests at the 1912 Olympic Stadium.
Yet it wasn’t until 2025 that he finally ticked the world record off his Stockholm bucket list.
Duplantis had rattled through to victory with a perfect card, reaching a winning 6.00m in just four jumps. Yet when he set the bar at a world record height of 6.28m, few expected him to clear it first time.
Not for the first time, the Swede defied expectations, hopping over the bar as if it were a country stile and delivering the home crowd the world record they so desperately craved.
“I feel full to the brim right now,” said Duplantis. “I’ve got a lot of family here. The first time I jumped in this stadium when I was 11 years old, it was rainy and cold, and I jumped right under four metres – it was quite high for how young I was.”
It was the first of three world records he would break that year, in a run which reached its climax when he finally broke the 6.30m mark at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo last month.
Duplantis’ heroics were the highlight of an extraordinary afternoon in Stockholm, with no fewer than seven meeting records.
Fellow Swede Andreas Almgren landed a stunning victory in the men’s 5000m, while Julien Alfred followed up her win in Oslo with another impressive 10.75 in the women’s 100m.
Rai Benjamin claimed a statement win over Karsten Warholm and Alison Dos Santos in the men’s 400m hurdles, and there were also meeting records for Grace Stark in the 100m hurdles and Tara Davis-Woodhall in the long jump.
Paris: More meeting records
A year on from the Olympic Games, the 2025 Meeting de Paris was always going to be a chance for the world’s best to relive past glories.
Yet the eighth Wanda Diamond League meeting of the season also saw a flurry of wins which would set the tone for this year’s major championships.
As in Stockholm, the meeting records dropped like flies in the French capital, with Benjamin (400m hurdles), Stark (100m hurdles), Azeddine Habz (800m) and Marileidy Paulino (400m) all making history.
Coming off the back of his victory in Stockholm, Benjamin’s victory was more proof that the Olympic champion was still the man to beat ahead of Tokyo.
Likewise, Australia’s Nicola Olyslagers made it two wins in two in the women’s high jump, kickstarting a run of wins which would see her go on to win both the Diamond Trophy and World Championships gold.
Perhaps the most eye-catching win, however, came in the women’s 3000m steeplechase.
Kenya’s Faith Cherotich had already turned heads with her stunning win over Winfred Yavi in Doha and her meeting record in Oslo earlier in the season.
In Paris, she delivered her best performance yet, kicking away from Ugandan rival Peruth Chemutai to set a new world lead of 8:53.37 to become the sixth-fastest woman in history.
It was a performance which would set the tone for some more jaw-dropping Kenyan antics in Eugene the following week…
Eugene: Kipyegon and Chebet break world records
In each of the last three seasons, there has been at least one Wanda Diamond League meeting which has seen two world records.
It happened in Paris and Eugene in 2023, it happened in Silesia in 2024 and it happened again in Eugene this July.
This time, it was a Kenyan double as Faith Kipyegon and Beatrice Chebet celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Prefontaine Classic in style at Hayward Field.
Chebet kicked things off early on, finally breaking the world record she had been threatening for much of the first half of the season in the women’s 5000m.
The in-form Kenyan ace clocked an incredible 13:58.06, becoming the first woman ever to go under 14 minutes over five kilometres.
The time was two seconds faster than Gudaf Tsegay’s previous world record, set at the same stadium at the 2023 Wanda Diamond League Final.
“I’m so happy to become the first woman to run under 14 minutes,” said Chebet. “After Rome (where she ran 14:03.69), I knew that I was capable of running a world record. I told myself, ‘if Faith is trying for a world record in Eugene, why not me too?’”
A few hours later, Kipyegon too delivered on her promise of the world record in the women’s 1500m.
After her historic attempt at the first female four-minute mile in Paris a week earlier, Kipyegon came to the US west coast with a point to prove.
She proved it emphatically, clocking 3:48.68 to shave a third of a second off her own previous world record.
It was the fifth time the Kenyan had broken a world record at a Diamond League meeting in the last three seasons.
