Every world record of 2024

Mondo Duplantis had a point to prove when he made his first visit to China for the Diamond League season opener in April. Just a few weeks earlier, the usually dominant Swedish superstar had shown a rare sign of weakness at the World Indoor Championships in Glasgow, only just scraping to gold after a gruelling battle with US rival Sam Kendricks.

Any doubts about Duplantis' form were quickly blown away in Xiamen, however, as he set a new world record with just his fourth jump of the new Diamond League season. After first-time clearances at 5.62m, 5.82m and 6.00m, Duplantis then also sailed over 6.24m, adding a centimetre to the previous record which he had set at the Wanda Diamond League Final in Eugene the previous September. 

It was the first time any athlete had broken the same world record in consecutive Diamond League meetings, and the earliest any athlete had broken a world record in a Diamond League season.

“The indoor season was sloppier than I would have liked, so I had some fire in me today,” Duplantis said. “I really wanted to show what I could do.”

Like most of her peers, Ukrainian high jump star Yaroslava Mahuchikh was hoping to make a pre-Olympic splash when she arrived at the Wanda Diamond League Paris just a few weeks before the start of the Games in the French capital Yet few could have expected that her dress rehearsal would be quite so pitch perfect.

First, Mahuchikh saw off her biggest rival in an enthralling battle with Australia's Nicola Olyslagers. Then, she set her sights on some historic heights.

Having set a new Ukrainian record with her second jump at 2.07m, she then cleared 2.10m at the first time of asking to take down one of the longest-standing world records in athletics.

Mahuchikh's jump was a centimetre higher than the 2.09m which Bulgaria's Stefka Kostadinova had jumped at the World Championships in 1987 and it cemented her status as the greatest female high jumper of her generation.

It was the second world record of the season in a Diamond Discipline, and the third in total on the DIamond League circuit, after Beatrice Chebet clocked 28:54.14 in a non-Diamond League 10,000m in Eugene in May.

While Mahuchikh's world record came as a surprise, the other world record to fall in Paris was altogether more predictable.

In 2023, Kenya's Faith Kipyegon had completed an unprecedented hat-trick, breaking the 1500m, 5000m and mile world records at Wanda Diamond League meetings in Florence, Paris and Monaco respectively. So when she returned to Paris to launch her 1500m title defence last June, hopes were high of another historic performance.

Kipyegon delivered emphatically, clocking 3:49.04 to shave 0.07 seconds off her Florence record to delight the Parisian crowd once again. For the second year in a row, Diamond League fans in the French capital had seen two world records broken on a single night. 

“I knew the world record was possible because I recently ran very fast in Kenya. I was coming here to just run my race and to see what shape I’m in to defend my title at the Olympics," said the Kenyan, who would go on to claim a third Olympic gold and a fifth Diamond League title later in the summer.

Coming in second behind Kipyegon, Australia's Jessica Hull had made her own history in Paris as she set a new Oceanian record and became the fifth-fastest woman ever with 3:50.83.

A week later in Monaco, Hull stepped out of the Kenyan's shadow and joined her in the ever longer list of Diamond League world record breakers.

The Australian raced to 5:19.76 in the 2000m in Monaco, obliterating Francine Niyonsaba's previous mark of 5:21.56 despite what she later said was "a level of fatigue I had never felt before".

"It was incredible, when I was on my own in the last lap, everyone was cheering for me. It is amazing to be called a world record holder now," she added.

After a bittersweet Olympics in which he won 5000m gold but finished a shock fourth in the 1500m, Norway's Jakob Ingebrigtsen was on a mission to bounce back to his best when he resumed his Diamond League campaign in August.

He did so with aplomb, claiming a fabulous victory over Olympic champion Cole Hocker in Lausanne before going on to set only the second outdoor world record of his career in the 3000m in Silesia. 

This was not just any old world record, meanwhile. In the sweltering heat of the Silesian sun, he clocked 7:17.55, knocking more than three seconds of Daniel Komen's previous mark which had stood for a full 28 years. As he soaked it in, the usually self-assured Norwegian appeared even to have surprised himself.

“I was hoping to challenge the world record here, but based on my training, I can never predict exactly what kind of time I am capable of. I would not have imagined I could run 7:17," he said. 

Less than an hour after Ingebrigtsen's triumph in the 3000m, Silesia became the fourth Diamond League meeting in two years to see two world records broken on the same day, as Mondo Duplantis delivered yet again.

Five months on from his triumph in Xiamen, Duplantis had already broken the record again, jumping 6.25m to claim Olympic gold in Paris.

Yet there was no stopping the Swede in 2024, and in Silesia, he sailed over 6.26m to break the world record for third time in the season and the tenth time in total. 

Even after an almost untoppable year, however, Duplantis insisted there was still more to come in 2025.

“It is just about being in good shape and believing you can do it. I always want to jump as high as I possibly can and to keep pushing. I have never hit a jump that felt absolutely perfect, so I always feel like I can do better.”