Femke Bol won her fifth successive Diamond League final, winning the women’s 400m hurdles in Zurich with a meeting record 52.18.
The Dutch athlete will be seeking to defend her title at next month’s World Athletics Championships, and she will travel to Tokyo full of confidence after another superb display.
With her new stride pattern now firmly embedded since her season-opener in Rabat in May, she was controlled, fluent and fast as she pulled away from a quality international field. She won in 52.18, exactly one second clear of second placed Emma Zapletalová who set a new Slovakian record.
In the men’s 400m hurdles, world record holder Karsten Warholm was in similarly imperious form, winning in a meeting record 46.70. It is the third Diamond League Final victory of the Norwegian’s career.
Werro and Laros rise to the occasion
Two of the gold medallists from July’s Bergen 2025 European Athletics U23 Championships enjoyed their biggest victories to date as senior athletes.
Thrilling the home crowd, Audrey Werro of Switzerland held off Great Britain’s fast-finishing Olympic 1500m bronze medallist Georgia Hunter-Bell to win the women’s 800m in a national record of 1.55.91. The British athlete also set a new personal best in second place with 1:55.96.
In the men’s 1500m, the Netherlands’ Niels Laros won in a national record of 3:29.20. It was a second major victory within a week, having won at the Brussels Diamond League six days earlier.
The 20-year-old European Athletics Rising Star winner from last year is a genuine medal contender for next month’s Tokyo World Athletics Championships.
Gressier wins 3000m thriller
There was a thrilling finish in the men’s 3000m. France’s Jimmy Gressier, half marathon winner in April’s European Running Championships in Brussels-Leuven, just got the better of Olympic 10,000m and 5000m medallist Grant Fisher and European 5000m record holder Andreas Almgren in a blanket finish.
The French athlete edged it in 7:36.78, 0.03 ahead of Fisher and a further 0.01 clear of Almgren. In the men’s 3000m steeplechase, there was another confidence boosting victory for Germany’s Frederik RupperT who won in 8:09.02.
Ditaji Kambundji equalled her Swiss national record of 12.40 in placing second in the women’s 100m hurdles to Jamaica’s Ackera Nugent, who won in 12.30. And in the women’s 400m won by Olympic silver medallist Salwa Eid Naser of Bahrain in 48.70, Norway’s Henriette Jaeger was third in a national record of 49.49.