ATHLETICS – Bahrain’s reigning Olympic champion and former world champion Winfred Yavi will be one of two of the kingdom’s elite athletes who will be competing in the Memorial Van Damme in Brussels, Belgium this weekend.
The two-day event is the highly anticipated season-finale of the prestigious Diamond League – the premier one-day meeting series held annually worldwide – and it will feature the biggest names in track and field.
They will be vying for the first major international athletics title for 2026, with 32 Diamond League champions set to be crowned at the Belgian capital.
Yavi will be joined in the meet by fellow-Bahraini superstar athlete Birhanu Balew. They qualified via the Diamond League’s Road to the Final, held across four different continents over the past several months to earn a shot at winning the iconic Diamond Trophy.
Yavi will be hitting the track at the 50,000-plus capacity King Baudouin Stadium in the women’s 3,000 metres steeplechase.
She will be gunning for her second Diamond League title in her career, having also won at the finale in 2023.
Balew, meanwhile, will be running in the men’s 5,000m. While he has won multiple Diamond League races in the past, he will be aiming for his maiden season’s crown in the series.
Yavi’s race is scheduled to take place tomorrow night at 9.23pm, Bahrain time.
The 26-year-old will be going up against 10 of the world’s best in the discipline, headlined by former Olympic champion Peruth Chemutai from Uganda and reigning world champion Faith Cherotich from Kenya.
Other top names in the star-studded run are Marwa Bouzayani from Tunisia, Lea Meyer and Olivia Gurth from Germany, Kena Tufa from Ethiopia, and Doris Lemngole, also from Kenya.
The field is completed by Elise Thorner from Britain and Americans Lexy Halladay and Gabrielle Jennings.
Yavi heads into the race having won the women’s 3,000m steeplechase at the Athletissima Diamond League meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland last month, which was her last competitive run prior to Brussels.
Her season’s best is eight minutes 51.54 seconds, which is still far from her personal best of 8:44.39, which is an Asian and Bahraini record and which is also the second-fastest mark of all time.
On the distaff, Balew will be competing in the men’s 5,000m, scheduled for Saturday at 9.22pm, Bahrain time.
The 30-year-old is one of 12 athletes qualified for the race.
Amongst his chief rivals are Paris 2024 Olympics bronze-medallist Grant Fisher from the US and his countrymen Nico Young and Graham Blanks, Ethiopia’s Biniam Mehary, and the Kenyan trio of Cornelius Kemboi, Jacob Krop, and Reynold Cheruiyot.
The rest of the competitors are Tshepo Tshite from South Africa, Egide Ntakarutimana from Burundi, Dominic Lokinyomo Lobalu from Switzerland, and Mounir Akbache from France.
Balew had also competed in Lausanne, where he triumphed in a hotly contested 5,000m.
He heads into the Memorial Van Damme having clocked his personal best this season, which is also an Asian and Bahraini record of 12:47.73.
Following their appearances in the Diamond League Final, both Yavi and Balew are also set to fly the kingdom’s flag as part of a 34-member athletics national team at the 20th Asian Games in Aichi and Nagoya, Japan.
Both Yavi and Balew are three-time gold medal winners in past editions of the Asiad.
patrick@gdnmedia.bh
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