The 2023 Wanda Diamond League is just around the corner, with the season launch set to take place at the Seashore Group Doha Meeting at Qatar Sports Club on May 5th.
For the world's best track and field athletes, Doha will just be the starting gun on a season-long campaign in athletics' premier one-day series. In a journey spanning four continents and 14 cities, athletes compete for points at 13 series meetings between May and September, with the best qualifying for the Wanda Diamond League Final in Eugene on September 16-17th.
In the second part of our season preview, we take a look at all the action from the midway point in Silesia to the series finale at Hayward Field.
Read: WDL season preview: part I
Star-studded Silesia
The Kamila Skolimowska Memorial meeting in Silesia returns to the Wanda Diamond League circuit this year, having become the first ever series meeting on Polish soil in 2022. Last year's edition saw a spate of meeting records, and Polish fans will be hoping for a repeat when they welcome several international superstars to the Silesia Stadium ion July 16th. Having set a new meeting record of 6.10m last year, world record holder Armand "Mondo" Duplantis will return in the men's pole vault, while fellow Diamond League champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen headlines the men's 1500m. In the men's high jump, meanwhile, joint Olympic champions Mutaz Essa Barshim and Gianmarco Tamberi will go head to head again with Tamberi hoping to defend his 2022 title and Barshim out to win a fourth Diamond Trophy this year.
Duplantis, who is hoping to win a third successive Diamond League title in 2023, will also be in action five days later at the Herculis EBS Meeting in Monaco. The Swedish star has some unfinished business at Herculis, which is one of the few WDL meetings at which he does not hold the meeting record in the men's pole vault. With the record currently at 6.02m and Duplantis having extended his world record to 6.22m earlier this year, only a fool would bet against him this time around.
London calling
The last meeting before the World Athletics Championships in Budapest will take place in London, at a stadium soaked in athletics history. A stalwart of the Diamond League circuit in years gone by, London will make a much-anticipated return after a four-year hiatus on July 23rd, with athletes taking to the track on which Mo Farah, Usain Bolt and others wrote themselves into the record books at the 2012 Olympics. The London Stadium has also had its fair share of iconic Diamond League moments, including Kendra Harrison's 100m hurdles world record in 2016.
With the world championships behind them, athletes can pour all their energies into the battle for the Diamond Trophy from August onwards. The home straight of the season begins in Zurich on August 31st, where the Weltklasse meeting will make its 14th successive appearance on the Diamond League circuit and its first as a series meeting. Traditionally the venue for the season finale, the Letzigrund Stadium will no doubt deliver the usual quotient of world class action on the track.
