The Memorial Van Damme in Brussels has been the season-closing meeting in all five previous Diamond League campaigns and this year is no different, as the world’s best athletes again converge on the Belgian capital for their final major performances of the season.
While the meeting is now known as the season finale and has been part of the IAAF Diamond League since 2010, the event was first held in 1977, having been organised by a group of local journalists in order to honour the Belgian endurance runner Ivo Van Damme, a double silver medalist at the 1976 Olympics, who had lost his life in a car accident.
Diamond Race leaders in all 16 disciplines will toe the line in Brussels, with only Britain’s Mo Farah, who jointly leads the 5000m Diamond Race with Ethiopia’s Yomif Kejeclcha, absent.
Retrospective…
Regular spectators at the Brussels meeting don’t need long memories in order to recall truly world class performances.
Only last year they witnessed one of the greatest high jump performances of all time from Qatar’s Mutaz Essa Barshim, who cleared an astonishing 2.43m on his way to claiming the Diamond Trophy. That was one of three meeting records set on the night, the others being Barbora Spotakova’s 67.99m javelin and Valerie Adams’ 20.59m shot put. Barshim’s superhuman effort wasn’t just a meeting record, however – it was an outright Diamond League record, as one might expect from a performance that only world record holder Javier Sotomayor bettered.
World class performances are par for the course in Brussels, though.
In recent years the previous performance that stood out against all others was the USA’s Aries Merritt’s stunning World Record 12.80 seconds over 110m hurdles at the end of the 2012 season.
The year before, Yohan Blake also scorched to the second quickest 200m in history, clocking 19.26, which remains an IAAF Diamond League record, while other Diamond League bests set in 2011 were Anna Chicherova’s 2.05m high jump and Bekele’s 26:43.16 10000m. In 2010 Andreas Thorkildsen threw 89.88m to take the javelin, a mark since betered by Julius YEgo in Birmingham, and in 2012 Francine Niyonsaba set a record 1:56.59 over 800m.
Prior to the Diamond League era, numerous world records were set at the Memorial Van Damme.
In 1997 there was an incredible distance double, as the great Daniel Koman set a new 5000m record of 12:39.74 on the same night that the legendary Paul Tergat clocked 26:27.85, a new best for 10000m.
Indeed, Brussels was seen as something of an endurance runner’s paradise, with Kenenisa Bekele setting another 10000m world record, 26:17.53, in 2005.
Diamond Race Leaders
The low down on who can take the Diamond Trophies in <link http: www.diamondleague.com news single-news detail pre-brussels-diamond-race-update _blank external-link-new-window external link in new>Brussels can be found here.
Dean Hardman for the IAAF Diamond League
