27 November, 2023

The Greatest Season Ever: Trash Talk

Photo: Marta Gorczynska

The 2023 Wanda Diamond League season was arguably the greatest in the series' 14-year history. It began with the world's best sprinters locking horns both on and off the track, as Fred Kerley and Sha'Carri Richardson both came out fighting in the first few meetings.

When the Wanda Diamond League season got underway in Doha last May, few could have imagined what an incredible campaign lay ahead. 2023 proved to be a vintage year in athletics' premier one-day series, delivering seven world record, 13 Diamond League records and nailbiting drama across the 14 meetings.

It began, as so many great sporting sagas do, with some good old-fashioned trash talk.

Ahead of the season opener, all eyes were on Fred Kerley. The US sprinter was reigning world champion, and a firm favourite to claim the Diamond Trophy in the men's 100m and 200m. He had also been stoking the fires ahead of the series by demanding a showdown with Olympic champion Lamont Marcell Jacobs.

"I'll be there. I don't know if he'll show up," said Kerley ahead of the Seashore Group Doha Meeting, at which he cruised to a comfortable victory with 19.92m in the 200m. At that point, Jacobs had not appeared at a Diamond League meeting for two years amid ongoing struggles with injury, and the two men had already been exchanging barbs on social media in the weeks previously.

Jacobs later made his first Diamond League appearance in two years at the Meeting de Paris, while Kerley picked up further wins in Rabat and Florence.

"I'd be there. I don't know if he'd show up..."@fkerley99 is not giving up on this idea of a one-on-one with @crazylongjumper.#DohaDL #DiamondLeague pic.twitter.com/eMqGVB3Gu3
— Wanda Diamond League (@Diamond_League) May 4, 2023

When the two men finally met in Xiamen later in the season, Kerley defended his early-season jibes. "Trash talk is a very normal thing in sport, so track and field should be no different," he said.

Neither Kerley nor Jacobs went on to the win the Diamond Trophy in either sprint discipline, but their back and forth set the tone for a year in which the world's best sprinters frequently locked horns both on and off the track. Kerley also sparred with compatriot Noah Lyles shortly before Lyles robbed him of his title at the World Championships in Budapest.

In the women's sprints, the fireworks mainly came on the track.

US star Sha'Carri Richardson had never won on the Diamond League circuit before she arrived in Doha, and she came to Qatar with a point to prove after some ups and downs in the previous few years. She proved it emphatically, beating Jamaica's 200m world champion Shericka Jackson with a breathtaking meeting record and world lead of 10.76 to land the first blow in what became an extraordinarily high-quality battle in the women's sprints.

Richardson picked up further Diamond League wins in Silesia and Zurich, and swept to the 100m world title in Budapest. Jackson, meanwhile, became only the third athlete ever to win two Diamond Trophies in two days when she claimed both the 100m and 200m series titles in Eugene last September. The two women also faced fierce competition from Ivorian Marie-Josée Ta Lou, who rampaged to four wins in five meetings in mid-season.

"I'm so blessed and thankful. I feel at peace," said Richardson after her victory in Doha. As far as everyone else was concerned, she had made an explosive return to form and set the tone for a raucous season of sprinting. Between her fireworks on the track and Kerley's fireworks off it, the 2023 season had truly burst out of the blocks.

In the second part of The Greatest Season Ever, we look at the flurry of world records in June and July, and ta historic hat-trick for Kenyan middle-distance star Faith Kipyegon.