Photo: Marta Gorczynska
The 2024 Wanda Diamond League came to a close in Brussels last month, bringing to end an epic, six-month long odyssey across the world's biggest and most prestigious one-day meetings. With six world records, numerous new champions and winners from all four corners of the globe, it was another vintage year as athletics' premier one-day series marked its 15th anniversary.
Here's a look back at some of the key facts and figures behind the 2024 Wanda Diamond League season.
The Wanda Diamond League was once again a truly global series in 2024, as the best athletes from across the world battled it out in 15 different cities across four different continents between April and September.
The Road to the Final began on the eastern shores of China with Xiamen and Suzhou and travelled to Africa, the Middle East and the far west coast of the USA before reaching its climax in the heart of Europe last month.
A total of 1094 athletes took part in the series, with 95 countries represented on the startlists across the course of the season. The 32 Wanda Diamond League champions hailed from 21 different countries while there were 156 individual competition winners from 47 countries overall.
Luxemburg's Patrizia Van der Weken picked up her country's first ever Diamond League win with her victory in the 100m in Paris, while Julien Alfred became the first St. Lucian ever to be crowned Diamond League champion with her triumph in the women's 100m final in Brussels.
There were some familiar faces on the podium when the 32 Wanda Diamond League champions received their Diamond Trophies at the final in Brussels.
Faith Kipyegon notched up her fifth Diamond Trophy in the women's 1500m, making her the joint-second-most successful female athlete in the series history alongside New Zealand shot put legend Valerie Adams.
Sweden's Mondo Duplantis rampaged to his fourth successive title, meanwhile, edging ever closer to the series record of seven held by fellow pole vaulter Renaud Lavillenie and US triple jump legend Christian Taylor.
Yet it wasn't just the seasoned champions who burned brightly in 2024. The 2024 campaign saw 14 athletes win the Diamond Trophy for the very first time, two more than in the previous year.
They included Puerto Rico's Jasmine Camacho-Quinn, who had notched up 13 career Diamond League wins before she won her first title in the 100m hurdles this year, and Jamaica's Ackeem Blake, who claimed the title with his first ever Diamond League win in the men's 100m.
As the only series which provides regular, top-level competition to athletes from across the spectrum of athletics' disciplines, the Wanda Diamond League has also always been the stage on which the stars of tomorrow are forged.
That was no different in 2024, with several young stars cutting their title-winning teeth on the Diamond League circuit. Italian shot putter Leonardo Fabbri, Cuban triple jumper Leyanis Perez Hernandez and Kenyan 3000 steepelchase Amos Serem all picked up their first senior global title with the Diamond Trophy in 2024.
After a historic year of records in 2023, the 2024 season once again saw the world's best athletes push the boundaries of what was possible as they used the Wanda Diamond League stage to get in gold-medal shape for the Olympic Games in Paris.
There were six world records in the series this season, one fewer than in 2023 but still more than the series had seen in any other season to date.
The records began to fall earlier than ever in 2024, with Mondo Duplantis setting the tone with a staggering 6.24m in the men's pole vault at the season opener in Xiamen.
For the second year in a row, there were two meetings which saw two world records on a single day. In Paris, Faith Kipyegon raced to 3:49.04 in the women's 1500m while Yaroslava Mahuchikh jumped 2.10m in the women's high jump. In Silesia, Jakob Ingebrigtsen clocked 7:17.55 in the men's 3000m while Duplantis picked up his third world record of the season with 6.26m in the pole vault.
Australia's Jessica Hull also joined the growing ranks of Diamond League world record breakers with her 5:19.70 in the women's 2000m in Monaco.
As well as the world-beaters, there were also plenty of athletes who rewrote their national and continental history books in 2024. A total of 88 national records were broken over the course of the season, one more than in the previous year. The season also saw 17 area records, with at least one in each of the six continental areas.
