The 2025 Wanda Diamond League season reached a spectacular climax in August as the world’s best athletes lined up at Weltklasse Zurich for the two-day series final.
This year’s final not only provided the chance to win the Diamond Trophy and up to 50,000 USD in prize money. It was also the final dress rehearsal for the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo.
As always, the final delivered high drama, ferocious head-to-heads and a flurry of historic performances.
Olyslagers and Duplantis fly high
The first Diamond League champions of 2025 were crowned not in the stadium, but in the very heart of Zurich’s historic centre.
As in 2021 and 2022, day one of this year’s final was held as a city event at the Sechseläutenplatz, with some of the world’s biggest stars strutting their stuff in the street in front of Zurich’s iconic opera house.
Pole vault world record holder Mondo Duplantis was the star attraction, and the Swede staved off a spirited challenge from Manolo Karalis to claim his fifth straight Diamond League title with 6.00m.
In the men’s long jump, Simon Ehammer delighted the home crowd with a victorious third-round effort of 8.32m, winning his second Diamond Trophy and his first on home soil.
Yet it was Australia’s Nicola Olyslagers who stole the headlines, as she leapt to an Oceania record of 2.04m to beat three-time Yaroslava Mahuchikh and get her hands on the Diamond Trophy for the very first time.
It was a sign of things to come, as Olyslagers jumped to her first outdoor world title in Tokyo a few weeks later.
Bol extends streak
A day after Olyslagers triumph at the opera house, the rest of the best assembled at the Letzigrund Stadium for an equally historic second night of the final.
Dutch 400m hurdles star led the charge, clocking 52.18 to break her own meeting record and claim her fifth successive series title.
It was also – astonishingly – Bol’s 30th Diamond League victory in a row, in a historic winning streak stretching back to her breakthrough season in 2020. She remains one of the only athletes never to have lost a Diamond League race.
Bol was not the only familiar face on the podium, as Kenya’s 800m Olympic champion Emmanuel Wanyonyi raced to his third successive Diamond Trophy and Norwegian 400m hurdles star Karsten Warholm regained the title for the first time since 2021.
Surprise winners
Yet for all the usual suspects, the 2025 final also threw up a whole host of surprise first-time winners.
Switzerland’s Audrey Werro sent the Letzigrund into raptures as she ran a national record of 1:55.91 to claim a sensational first Diamond Trophy in the women’s 800m.
The Netherlands’ Niels Laros also grabbed his first series title with a national record, building on an impressive performance in Brussels to clock 3:29.20 and beat the likes of Azeddine Habz and Yared Nuguse.
Meanwhile in the men’s 3000m steeplechase, Frederik Ruppert held off Kenyan talent Edmund Serem to become the first German ever to be crowned Diamond League champion in a track discipline.
His compatriot Julian Weber also claimed the Diamond Trophy in the javelin, throwing two world leads in the first two rounds to win with 91.51m, the furthest throw ever recorded at a Diamond League Final.
Lyles’ historic six-pack
In keeping with the drama of recent years, it was also a historic night in the sprints and sprint hurdles.
Olympic champion Julien Alfred successfully defended her title in the women’s 100m with a rapid 10.76, while Cordell Tinch crowned his superb season with a brilliant 12.92 and a first ever Diamond League title.
Meanwhile, all eyes were on the men’s 200m, where Noah Lyles lined up to take on Letsile Tebogo in a clash of the reigning Olympic champions.
As in Monaco earlier in the season, it was Lyles who came up trumps, beating his Botswanan rival by a whisker with 9.74.
It was the sixth Diamond League title of Lyles’ career, making him the most successful track athlete in the history of the series.
“Six is a big number. I heard that is the highest number in track,” he said. “Another record on the list – it is pretty nice to have that.”
