The 2024 Wanda Diamond League season will burst out of the blocks on April 20th as some of the world's biggest sprint and hurdles stars descend on Xiamen's Egret Stadium for the first meeting of the campaign.
Reigning Diamond League champion Tobi Amusan will launch her title defence against a star-studded field which include Jamaican world champion Danielle Williams, Puerto Rico's Olympic champion Jasmine Camacho-Quinn and the last two world indoor champions in France’s Cyrena Samba-Mayela and Devynne Charlton of the Bahamas.
Charlton, who set a world indoor record of 7.65 to win the 60m hurdles in Glasgow last month, will be keen to convert that form outdoors, while 100m hurdles world record holder Amusan will be keen to return to her record-breaking form of 2022, having recently won the African Games title. Samba-Mayela, Williams and Camacho-Quinn will all provide stiff opposition and will hope to lay down an early-season marker against their chief rivals on the path to the Paris Olympics.
In the men's 100m, Christian Coleman will also be hoping to get his Diamond Trophy defence off to a flying start as he takes on US rival Fred Kerley and Jamaican stars Yohan Blake and Ackeem Blake.
Coleman has good memories of this stadium, having set a world-leading time of 9.83 when winning in Xiamen last year, and as the US Olympic Trials loom into view, the 2019 world 100m champion will be keen to take victory over Kerley, who won the world 100m title in 2022. Coleman had another fine indoor season, clocking 6.41 to win his second world indoor title, while Kerley also showed promising signs by setting a 60m PB of 6.55.
Fellow US superstar Sha'Carri Richardson leads the charge in the women's 200m, returning to Diamond League action after she narrowly missed out on a first ever Diamond Trophy at last year's final in Eugene.
Richardson may be better known as a 100m sprinter, but she proved in Budapest last year she can also contend over the longer sprint, winning bronze in a PB of 21.92 to back up her 100m gold. In the 200m in Xiamen, she will face fellow sub-22-second athletes Tamara Clark and Anavia Battle of USA, while Switzerland’s Mujinga Kambundji, USA’s Kayla White and Twanisha Terry and Anthonique Strachan of the Bahamas are also in the line-up.7
400m Diamond League champion Marileidy Paulino also returns to Xiamen, after clocking 49.63 there on her way to the series title last season. The Dominican star takes on Polish rival Natalia Kaczmarek and Sada Williams of Barbados in a re-run of last year's World Athletics Championships final in Budapest.
The men’s 110m hurdles will see reigning Olympic champion Hansle Parchment of Jamaica take on a field which includes Japan's Shunsuke Izumiya and US stars such as Freddie Crittenden, Cordell Tinch and world bronze medallist Daniel Roberts.
Parchment's stunning victory over Grant Holloway in Xiamen last year marked a turning point in his season, with the Jamaican going on to win the Diamond League title in Eugene just two weeks later.
