The Olympics were over, but the season was far from finished as the world's best athletes returned from Japan in August. With five Wanda Diamond League meetings still to go, there was still time to pick up points on the Road to Zurich and earn a shot at the last major track-and-field title of the summer season.
The business end of the season didn't disappoint, as freshly crowned Olympic champions such as Elaine Thompson-Herah and Mondo Duplantis picked up where they left off in Tokyo and continued their charge towards the Wanda Diamond League Final.
Eugene - August 21st
The first meeting back after the Olympic games was also the first full Wanda Diamond League meeting in Oregon's newly spruced up Hayward Field, and the action on track proved just as impressive as the sparkling surroundings of the new stadium.
Having defended both her Olympic titles in Tokyo, Elaine Thompson-Herah stunned the world again in Eugene as she clocked a personal best and Diamond League record of 10.54 to win the women's 100m. The second-fastest time in history put her within five hundredths of a second of a world record which had long been considered unbeatable, and cemented her status as favourite to take both the 100m and 200m Diamond Trophies.
There was also a Diamond League record for local hero and Olympic champion Ryan Crouser, who marked 22.95 with his first throw in the shot put before breaking the record again later on with 23.15. Wins for Dalilah Muhammad (400m hurdles) and Noah Lyles (200m) also delighted the home crowd, while Kenyans Faith Kipyegon (1500m) and Norah Jeruto (3000m steeplechase) also broke meeting records.
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Lausanne - August 26th
Thompson-Herah's apparently unstoppable title charge was briefly halted when the series returned to Europe a few days later, as the Jamaican star was beaten by her compatriot and fellow sprint legend Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce in Lausanne. Fraser-Pryce clocked a PB of 10.60 to edge out her fellow Jamaican and deliver an emphatic response to Thompson-Herah's historic performance in Eugene, before promising that she still had more in the tank for the rest of the season.
In the women's triple jump, Venezuelan Olympic champion Yulimar Rojas showed her class by twice breaking the Diamond League record in the space of a single competition, clearing 15.42 early in the competition before going to 15.52 later on. A fter a wind-assisted 15.56, it even looked for a brief moment as if she had broken her own world record of 15.67, set just a few weeks before in the Olympic final.
The shock of the night came in the men's pole vault, where Olympic champion Mondo Duplantis slumped to a surprise defeat on his return to Diamond League action. In the city where had broken the European record the previous year, Duplantis could only finish fourth as the USA's Chris Nilsen claimed his first ever Diamond League win with 5.82m.
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Paris - August 28th
Duplantis bounced back from defeat a few days later in Paris, however, on a night on which several Olympic champions reasserted their status as favourites for the Wanda Diamond League title.
The Swedish superstar cleared a meeting record 6.01m to claim a comfortable victory over Nilsen, before narrowly missing out on his own world record with three attempts at 6.19m.
Thompson-Herah also returned to winning ways, clocking 10.72 to pick up yet another 100m victory in the absence of Fraser-Pryce, while fellow Jamaican Hansle Parchment, who had suffered a surprise defeat in Lausanne, clocked 13.03 in the men's 110m hurdles to secure his place in the Wanda Diamond League Final.
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