World record holders Mondo Duplantis and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone will be among the international stars at the 13th leg of the 2023 Wanda Diamond League at the Allianz Memorial Van Damme meeting in Brussels on September 8th.
Duplantis, who broke the world record for the sixth time with a 6.22m jump in Clermont-Ferrand earlier this year, will be challenging for a third successive Wanda Diamond League title in 2023. Brussels is one eight Diamond League meetings at which he holds the meeting record, thanks to a 6.05m jump back in 2021.
McLaughlin-Levrone is also a current world record holder with 50.68 in the women's 400m hurdles, and she will be hoping to make her mark on the Diamond League once again in Brussels, four years after she won the Diamond Trophy in 2019.
The two will be joined by a raft of other superstars, including Norwegian distance dynamo Jakob Ingebrigtsen. Olympic and Diamond League champion in the 1500m, the 23-year-old's last victory at Memorial Van Damme came in 2020.
Yaroslava Mahuchikh has had more recent success in the Belgian capital, posting a personal best of 2.05m there to reach the Wanda Diamond League Final last year. The Ukrainian star, who went on to win the Diamond Trophy in Zurich, even came close to breaking the world record on a memorable night last September.
“The Memorial feels like a home competition to me. I was very well received in Belgium,” said Mahuchikh on Thursday.
Others in action at the Memorial Van Damme include Olympic marathon bronze medallist Bashir Abdi and Belgium's own double Olympic heptathlon champion Nafissatou Thiam.
The Wanda Diamond League is athletics' premier one-day meeting series, which comprises 14 of the most prestigious events in global track and field. Athletes compete for points at the 13 series meetings in a bid to qualify for the two-day Wanda Diamond League Final in Eugene on 16th-17th September.
Click here to see the 2023 Wanda Diamond League calendar in full.
