ATHLETICS – Bahrain’s former world champion and Paris 2024 Olympics silver-medallist Salwa Eid Naser will be running a star-studded women’s 400 metres this evening at the Kamila Skolimowska Memorial in Silesia, Poland.
The meeting is the latest stop on this year’s Diamond League – the premier one-day competition series held annually under World Athletics, track and field’s international governing body.
Naser’s race gets underway at 5.14pm, Bahrain time. She will be up against a high-quality field of eight of the world’s best in the distance, led by reigning Olympic champion Marileidy Paulino from the Dominican Republic.
The rest of her superstar rivals include Henriette Jaeger from Norway, Natalia Bukowiecka from Poland, Lieke Klaver from the Netherlands, Aaliyah Butler from the US, Roxana Gomez from Cuba, and the Jamaican pair of Stacey Ann Williams and Nikisha Pryce.
Silesia will be only the second appearance for Naser this international athletics season.
She made her 2026 debut at the Diamond League meeting in Shaoxing/Keqiao, China in May, where she ran the 400m and finished seventh in 51.56 seconds.
From today’s field, Naser is the only sprinter yet to dip below 50s this year, but the 28-year-old is expected to clock her season’s best.
Naser is the sole Bahraini athlete entered in the meeting.
In the Diamond League, after a season of competing and earning points, the world’s top elite athletes qualify for the finals, where they will battle for the prestigious Diamond Trophy of their respective events. The Diamond Trophy is the most prestigious annual crown in the sport.
This year’s final is scheduled for September 4 and 5 in Brussels, Belgium.
Aside from competing on athletics’ international circuit, Naser is also expected to be amongst the top medal hopefuls of Bahrain’s athletics national team that will be going for gold at the 20th Asian Games in Aichi and Nagoya, Japan, scheduled for September 19 to October 4.
patrick@gdnmedia.bh
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