One of the great things about the IAAF Diamond League series of meetings is the diversity on offer. From Scandinavia to China, Southern Europe to the USA, every meeting has developed a rich history, in some cases stretching back decades.
The Lowdown
Zurich’s Weltklasse, sometimes known as “the Olympics in one day” such are the quality of its fields, has, since 2010, been one of the two IAAF Diamond League season finales, where athletes in 16 of the 32 disciplines are crowned as winners and receive their Diamond Trophies. With double points on offer – eight for victory rather than the usual four – many events are decided on the night, while the IAAF Diamond League rules determine that even athletes in unsurpassable positions must compete in good faith at the finals to confirm their positions as Diamond Race winners.
With a first staging in 1928, the Weltklasse is one of the oldest meetings on the European circuit and takes place in the iconic Letzigrund Stadium, which recently hosted the 2014 European Athletics Championships.
Hometown Heroes
At those championships, new Swiss heroes emerged. Most thrillingly, Kariem Hussein won the 400m hurdles in a time of 48.96 to take Switzerland’s only gold medal. He races at the Weltklasse against European silver medalist and European leader Rasmus Magi of Estonia, as well as Diamond Race leader Michael Tinsley and the in-form Javier Culson.
Another athlete to capture the public’s imagination at the European Championships was the sprinter Mujinga Kambundji. She set a national record 22.83 in placing 5th in the 200m final, having earlier set Swiss under 23 records in the first round and semi final. She lines up in the 100m this week, an event in which she placed fourth in Europe, again setting a Swiss national record en route to the final.
Kambundji was also part of the Swiss 4x100m quartet who made the European final, only to suffer heartache. It was Kambundji herself who lost grip of the baton in the first moments of the race and the whole team return to race a 4x100m to close the Weltklasse, where they will hope to repay the warmth that the crowd showed them following their disappointment.
In the not so distant past, the big Swiss hero was Andre Bucher, the former World 800m Champion who set a personal best 1:42.55 at the Weltklasse in 2001, to huge approval from a vocal home support.
Iconic Performances
As one of the foremost one-day meetings in the world with a long and illustrious history, there have been countless world record breaking and breathtaking performances in Zurich over the years, including multiple world records broken on the same evening.
In 1981, Sebastian Coe broke the world mile record, having previously set the 1500m record in Zurich in 1979, clocking 3:48.53 for the classic distance, while the USA’s Renaldo Nehemiah also set a new best in the 110m hurdles of 12.93.
Indeed, the 110m hurdles world record would go on to be broken by Nehemiah’s compatriot, Roger Kingdom, eight years later at the Letzigrund, the last of four occasions on which the men’s sprint hurdles record has been set in Zurich.
American sprinter Evelyn Ashford clocked 10.76 in 1984, while spectators at the 1997 edition were treated to a distance double by two of the sport’s greats. Wilson Kipketer set 1:41.24 for 800m, a record that lasted 13 years and took the great David Rudisha to break it, while on the same day, Haile Gebrselassie ran 12:41.86 for 5000m, then the quickest in history.
In the IAAF Diamond League era, one outright Diamond League record has been set at the Letzigrund: Christina Obergfoll’s 69.57m javelin in 2011, while a series of Zurich meeting records have also been set since 2010.
Jamaican duo Yohan Blake and Usain Bolt ran 9.76 and 19.66 for 100m and 200m in a spectacular sprint double in 2012, while Vivian Cheruiyot sped to a 14:30.10 5000m in 2011.
Valerie Adams holds a number of IAAF Diamond League meeting records and Zurich is one of them. The New Zealander threw 20.98m just last year.
Dean Hardman for the IAAF Diamond League
26 August, 2014
A Close Up On… Zurich
