ATHLETICS – BAHRAIN’S superstar sprinter and former world champion Salwa Eid Naser will be competing in a star-studded women’s 400 metres today in the Silesia Kamila Skolimowska Memorial in Chorzow, Poland.
The meeting is part of this year’s Wanda Diamond League – the premier one-day meeting series held annually under World Athletics, track and field’s international governing body.
The women’s 400m is scheduled for a 5.04pm start, Bahrain time. Naser will be racing against some of the world’s best athletes in the distance, spearheaded by reigning world and Olympic champion Marileidy Paulino from the Dominican Republic. Also in the field are 2023 world championships silver-medallist and Paris 2024 Olympics bronze-medallist Natalia Bukowiecka of Poland, 2023 worlds bronze-medallist Sada Williams from Barbados, Amber Anning from Great Britain, Alexis Holmes from the US, Lieke Klaver from the Netherlands, Henriette Jaeger from Norway, and Martina Weil from Chile.
Paulino is currently the number one-ranked athlete in the world in the women’s 400m, while Naser is second, Bukowiecka third, and Anning fourth – making for an exciting, high-quality event.
Naser heads into Chorzow with a season’s best time of 48.67 seconds, which she set in April in Kingston, Jamaica. Her personal best is 48.14s, which is an Asian and national record set by Naser in 2019.
Naser is coming off a sensational performance last weekend where she set a new Asian, Arab, and national record in the women’s 300 metres – a seldom-run, non-Olympic event – at the Mityng Ambasadorow Bialostockiego i Podlaskiego Sportu, held in the Polish city of Krakow. The 27-year-old clocked a time of 35.85s as she finished runner-up to race winner Bukowiecka, who took first place in 35.51s.
Naser, who is the 2019 world champion and Paris 2024 Olympics silver medallist in the women’s 400m, is competing today in Chorzow as part of her ‘Road to Tokyo’ – her final lead-up to the World Athletics Championships 2025.
The highly anticipated worlds will be held next month in the close-to-70,000-capacity Japan National Stadium in the country’s capital, with Naser set to be a key member of Bahrain’s national team. More than 2,000 of the best track and field elite athletes representing around 200 nations are set to compete for medals across 49 events during the nine days of action from September 13 to 21.
Following today’s race, she will also be competing in two other Wanda Diamond League meetings. She will race on Wednesday next week in the Athletissima Lausanne in Switzerland, and then run in the Weltklasse Zurich meeting, also in Switzerland, on August 27 and 28, marking this year’s Wanda Diamond League final.
patrick@gdnmedia.bh
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