A Diamond [League] In The Rough ⏱️

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Compiled by David Melly and Paul Snyder

Was Xiamen The Most Unpredictable Pro Meet In Years? 💎

This past Saturday in Xiamen, China, the 2025 Diamond League circuit kicked off with a bang. And another bang, and another, and another.

There weren’t a ton many blazing-fast times to write home about. (With all due respect to Faith Kipyegon, her 2:29.21 1000-meter victory was about as anticlimactic as the third-fastest performance in history could be, since it was both a tick off her 2:29.15 lifetime best and just behind four-minute mile pace—now the elephant in the room for every one of Faith’s pre-Breaking4 races.) And while technically a world record was set in the 300m hurdles, Karsten Warholm was merely breaking his own record. And let’s be honest: on the pro level, no one really cares about the 300m hurdles.

No, the source of repeated fireworks in Xiamen came from upset after upset after upset. Instead of carrying forward their winning momentum into the outdoor season, six of the seven World Indoor champions in attendance lost their Diamond League season debut, the sole exception being—who else?—Mondo Duplantis.

Some results were crazier than others. In a stacked women’s shot put field, it’s not entirely shocking that Sarah Mitton got taken down by 20+ meter performances from Jessica Schilder (20.47m) and Chase Jackson (20.31m). Gudaf Tsegay isn’t really even the favorite when Beatrice Chebet is next to her on the starting line, and Chebet proved why with a 14:27.12 5000m victory and a 26.6 second final 200m. Yes, you read that right. Chebet, in the women’s race, closed her final 200 meters in twenty-six seconds and looked perfectly controlled doing it. Chebet is going to continue to be a problem for, well, everyone in the world not named Faith Kipyegon, for a while.

Chris Bailey kept his ascendent 2025 season rolling with a 44.27 personal best in the 400m, but he couldn’t quite reel in Bayapo Ndori in the final steps. Ndori stayed a hair’s breadth ahead in 44.25 and remains undefeated on the season with six straight wins.

Let’s talk about those short hurdles, though. Winning gold in Nanjing proved to be something of a curse in the Xiamen 100/110H, where Grant Holloway took an uncharacteristically awkward step after the eighth hurdle and ended up dead last while Cordell Tinch opened up his year with a 13.06 victory. In the women’s race, Devynne Charlton clattered a hurdle early and ended up a DNF while Danielle Williams tracked down Grace Stark at the line, 12.53 to 12.58. Fortunately, neither World Indoor champ appeared injured (and Holloway seemed to indicate online after the race it was more of a fluke performance), but Holloway has now lost two straight races for the first time in over a year and Charlton still can’t quite seem to fully translate her success at 60 meters to its outdoor cousin.

On top of all that, when was the last time we watched a meet where Letsile Tebogo, Shericka Jackson, and Soufiane El Bakkali were handily beaten? It’s not often any of these stalwarts of the DL racing circuit get taken down, and certainly not at the same time. 

Jackson is continuing a slow return to racing after injuries derailed her 2024 season, but the reality is that the fastest 200-meter runner alive finished 1.38 seconds off her personal best and 0.39 seconds behind winner Anavia Battle. Battle, on the other hand, is having a phenomenal start to the year, winning her first three open races of the season and clocking a lifetime-best 10.98 in the 100m a few weeks ago. Tebogo was dropping down to the 100m, not competing in his specialty 200-meter event. But let’s not forget that the 21-year-old has a World silver in the shorter event and a 9.86 personal best and still finished seventh in the race in 10.20. Tebogo has had plenty of time to brush off the rust, however, as he’s already raced seven times in 2025. He’s lost more than he’s won with season’s bests of just 10.20/20.23/45.26 to date.

Tebogo and Jackson boosters will argue that it’s still early in the season and success at a September championship necessitates a quiet April. But if we’re being honest, both those results are not encouraging for two major sprint stars.

The most surprising result, perhaps, is El Bakkali getting outkicked by Ethiopian Samuel Firewu, who before Saturday was 0-6 against the two-time Olympic champ head-to-head. From 2021 to 2024, El Bakkali had a 13-race winning streak going in the steeplechase, but he’s now lost twice in a row, after finishing second to Amos Serem in last year’s Diamond League final and Firewu in this year’s opener. But then again, El Bakkali hasn’t been beaten in a global final since 2019, so he probably still deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Speaking of streaks, some favorites did deliver in Xiamen, and now Valarie Allman’s head-spinning (and arm-and-leg-spinning) winning streak in the discus is up to 19 competitions, with her 68.95m victory over past World champs Yaime Perez and Laulauga Tausaga-Collins. Yaroslava Mahuchikh got revenge on her Australian nemeses in the high jump, which again raises the question of whether she has World Indoors-specific yips—her only two losses in the last two years came there. And of course, the only guy in the sport with a better streak than Val remains Mondo, whose string of pole vault victories extends to 25 with his 5.92m win in Xiamen.

It feels unfair to root for the favorite to lose purely because they’re the top dog, but unexpected results are always more interesting. And although the Diamond League sometimes receives criticism (from us as well as others) for yielding repetitive outcomes, this year’s opener certainly bucked the trend. If every DL meet this season is going to be as unpredictable as this one, we’re in for quite the thrilling roller-coaster ride.

After London, The Battle For World’s Best Marathoner Is Even Tighter 👑

This past Sunday, the largest marathon in world history took place along the banks of the Thames. A whopping 56,640 runners completed the 45th London Marathon, surpassing last year’s New York City total by around 1,000 finishers.

Odds are good you don’t particularly care to read about 56,628 or so of those runners. But what makes London special, especially over the past few years, is that those dozen names make up most, if not all, of the world’s top marathoners. It’s not unreasonable to look at the quality of the fields and conclude that the winner of London—more so than the Olympics, Boston, or any other major race—is the best marathoner in the world of any given year.

Recent editions of the London Marathon have made headlines with the incredibly stacked women’s fields organizers bring to the UK, with the top nine finisher’s in 2024’s race all in the top-20 all-time, including the past, then-present, and future world record holders. 

But this year, it was the men’s race that felt like an “Avengers assemble” moment of greatness. Just look at the top six finishers:

1. Sabastian Sawe, World HM champ, now 2-for-2 in wins and sub-2:03 marathons.

2. Jacob Kiplimo, two-time World XC champ, made his marathon debut in 2:03:37.

3. Alexander Mutiso Manyao, 2024 London champ, running away from Kenenisa Bekele.

4. Abdi Nageeye, reigning NYC champ and Olympic silver medalist in 2021.

5. Tamirat Tola, 2022 World champ, 2023 NYC champ, 2024 Olympic champ.

6. Eliud Kipchoge, GOAT.

That’s a nearly complete list of the best marathoners in the world right now, and all of them ran at least pretty well in London. The two most obvious names missing from this bunch are Boston champ John Korir and last year’s Tokyo champ/Olympic bronze medalist Benson Kipruto.

2024 saw seven different men win the seven different majors (six WMMs plus the Olympics), so it was difficult to determine who the best marathoner in the world was last year. Korir made a strong claim to that title two weeks ago, following up his win in Chicago with another in Boston, but now Sabastian Sawe has issued an actually, I’m the best right now statement of his own.

The 30-year-old Kenyan had never run a marathon before last December, when he became the second fastest debutant in history (behind only Kelvin Kiptum) with a 2:02:05 victory in Valencia. 

“But that’s just a time trial!” you may protest. Well, Sawe came back five months later to London and, although he still had rabbits to set the pace, took down a stacked field and ran another sub-2:03, claiming the victory in London in Kiptum-esque fashion with a blistering 13:56 split from 30k to 35k. Sawe has a short resume, but it’s about as impressive a resume as you’ll see in the sport so far. If he picks up a third win this fall, either at the World Championships or in another Major—especially an unpaced one like New York—he’ll inarguably be the world No. 1.

His biggest threat, however, may be hovering just behind him as Kiplimo made his marathon debut with a huge run of his own, clocking 2:03:37 for second. Short of winning a WMM in his first try, that’s also about as good a start to a marathoning career as you could ask for. And Kiplimo is officially 24 years old, with many, many prime years of marathoning ahead. So if he’s not the best marathoner in the world right now, he may be soon.

Then there’s Tola. Should he win another global gold, he would deserve at least an honorable mention nod in the conversation. He’s one of the best championship-style marathoners the world has ever seen, but he’s also less consistent than some of his rivals, registering a handful of DNFs among his great runs. 

And then, of course, there’s Kipchoge. A 2:05:25 at 40 years old is an incredible performance, but right now it’s more of a footnote on the greatest career over 26.2 ever put together as Kipchoge enters his 13th year of marathoning. It’s feeling less and less likely that Kipchoge will ever reclaim world No. 1 status, but should he win Sydney in its first year as a World Marathon Major, he shouldn’t be shut out of the debate entirely.

The women’s battle for world’s best marathoner is arguably even murkier. Let’s look first at the podium in London:

1. Tigst Assefa, second-fastest all-time, Olympic silver medalist, 2x Berlin champ, now the London champ and women’s only WR holder at 2:15:50.

2. Joyciline Jepkosgei, 2x WMM champ, 4x London podium finisher.

3. Sifan Hassan, third-fastest all-time, Olympic champ, 2x WMM champ

Jepkosgei is an incredible runner, but she has run seven major marathons since 2021 and hasn’t won any, so she has to be counted out. Assefa vs. Hassan presents an interesting debate: they’re #2 (2:11:53) and #3 (2:13:44) on the all-time list, have only raced head-to-head twice and split the spoils, and neither has run a truly poor marathon (at least since Assefa’s random 2:34 debut in Riyadh in 2022). In 2024, Assefa finished second in London and second at the Olympics, compared with Hassan’s fourth-place finish in Tokyo and win in Paris.

If there’s a tiebreaker, perhaps it’s Assefa’s string of fast times, as her fourth fastest career performance (2:16:23 in London ‘24) is well ahead of Hassan’s second-best (2:18:05 in Tokyo). But if context matters, it’s remarkable and notable that Hassan came back from four full months of no running post-Olympics to run 2:19:00 in London on Sunday. But regardless of who’s better, are either of them actually the world No. 1?

Any conversation of top female marathoners has to also consider Hellen Obiri and Ruth Chepngetich. (Apologies to last year’s champ, Peres Jepchirchir, inarguably the greatest marathoner in the world from 2021-2022, and Boston champ Sharon Lokedi, who likely needs a second signature win this season to truly enter the mix.) Chepngetich is only six months removed from her brain-breaking 2:09:56 world record, but a case of malaria over the winter and her withdrawal from London last week have deprived the world of a second look thus far. Until she lays down a marathon result in 2025, she can’t be this year’s best marathoner.

Obiri has lost her last three marathons (Boston to Lokedi, NYC ‘24 to Sheila Chepkirui, and the Olympics to Hassan) so she’s probably also not the best marathon runner in the world, a title she may have held in 2023 or early 2024. But perhaps losing Boston and New York, both of which she’s won already, may be a blessing for the sport as she’ll be less tempted to bounce between both in perpetuity as a defending champ and instead may end up somewhere like London to do what she hasn’t yet: chase a crazy-fast time in a rabbited race.

Ultimately, this deep dive into global marathoning rankings and results more or less yields what the London Marathon itself demonstrated in a far simpler and more entertaining way. The beauty of bringing so many talented runners face to face is that you do ultimately get a snapshot, however fleeting, of a true pecking order, and this year London delivered a decisive answer to road racing’s most intriguing question. That answer may change in a matter of months, but right now, Sebastian Sawe and Tigst Assefa are the world’s best marathoners.

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How Can We Bottle The Penn Relays Essence To Spritz Over The Sport? 🍾

Outside of major collegiate or international championships (and hotly-contested high school dual meets) relays can be difficult to slot into the broader track and field context. 

For professionals and high-caliber collegians, the two names of the game are preparation and qualification. The outdoor season is spent busting your ass in training while racing only enough to ensure you’ve got a spot on the starting line at whatever your Big Dance is. 

There’s just not much room for racing that might be considered superfluous. Notable exceptions, however, are the DMR, 4 x 800m, and 4 x mile/4 x 1500m relays at Penn Relays. The atmosphere for these relays is, for lack of a less overused word, electric. And while the circumstances that contribute to said electricity aren’t easily replicable, one aspect is.

First, the unique elements: Penn Relays is among the oldest, largest, most prestigious, and best-attended track and field meets in the world. Though it doesn’t matter in terms of NCAA qualification, schools want badly to bring one of those obnoxiously large wheel trophies onto their flight home as a carry-on. (This is helped in part because any leg on a Championship of America-contending relay squad has definitely qualified for the regional meet in their main event already.) 

But the aspect that can be copied and pasted to other meets, even professional ones, is a tried and true strategy for making athletes and even fans care. We’re talking, of course, about a little something called “putting the name of a team on the athlete’s chest.” In the men’s 4 x mile, the final leg saw eventual champs Washington in a dogfight with hometown hero Villanova, plus Virginia and North Carolina. The thousands of fans screaming their heads off in the rain for the duration of that race didn’t have to know who Nathan Green, Liam Murphy, Ethan Strand, or Gary Martin were to be deeply invested in the final outcome. They only needed to see the purple or navy or orange or blue trim on the athletes’ singlets and they felt strong feelings. Maybe they hate UNC for reasons they can’t identify. Maybe their niece went to ‘Nova for law school. Maybe they don’t like huskies as a type of dog. 

It really doesn’t matter. What does, is that sports fans instinctively root for or against teams when those teams are aligned however loosely with an institution or place. And for the athletes, the personal desire to win is a great motivator, but so too is the desire to not let down one’s teammates. Voila: high stakes!

At the pro level, this means putting together full fields of professional teams across any relay event. That could mean entering teams with names like “Dennis Mitchell’s Star Athletics” for races beyond a sprinter’s rust-buster. But even better, why not go with something even simpler – like “Florida.” Fans won’t care if the four athletes on that squad have the same coach or sponsor. But Floridians may very well cheer for any four pros from the Sunshine State for that fact alone. This only works, however, if the other teams assembled follow the same assemblage structure and naming convention. Let’s run a 4 x 400m featuring Florida, Texas, Arizona, and California. There’s not a person in America—sports fan or not—who doesn’t have some opinions on which of those places they like and dislike, and thus, which teams to root for or against. Why not recalibrate a favorite old and totally unfeasible idea of ours and hold a relay-centric meet that serves as a national championship for state-based teams? 

Want professional relays to take on a more serious, less half-assed and hair-brained purpose in the track and field calendar? How about this zany concept:

For global championships, there’s not a relay trials. At least in the United States, USATF picks the top individual performers in the 100m and 400m and cobble them together onto relay teams, generally to solid results… with the notable exception of the perennially beefing-it men’s 4 x 100m squads.

What if instead, at the conclusion of every U.S. championship meet, any combination of athletes from the 100m fields—Olympic/World team qualifiers or not—could self-assemble teams of four, then practice for a day, then race for the honor of being the actual Team USA relay squad? In all likelihood, we’d get teams made up of training partners, for easier practicing opportunities. But we also might get fun combinations of friends or fan favorites—the hosts of the Beyond the Records podcast only need one more leg to put together a pretty impressive relay. And at the end of the day, there are always about a dozen sub-10-second men and sub-11-second women in the U.S. each outdoor season, so it’s not like the United States would be truly costing itself a shot at a gold medal with more limited relay pools.

And of course, there’s always World Relays, which are next weekend in Guangzhou, China. We could all decide to unanimously start caring about those. Let’s start by adding back one distance-y relay and that could maybe work? 

A Skeptic’s Guide To Appreciating Breaking4 🧐

We’re assuming the bulk of our readership feels similarly about the announcement of Nike’s Breaking4 initiative as our writership. Something along the lines of:

Any time Faith Kipyegon lines up to race a 1500m or mile, it’s appointment viewing. Given what’s being promised by Nike for her Paris sub-four attempt in June (perfect pacing, even better footwear, presumably a host of other well-funded measures aimed to propel the greatest woman miler of all time into uncharted territory) there’s a chance she runs faster than her current PB and world record of 4:07.64, perhaps by a lot. But 7.65 seconds is more than a lot in the context of the world’s best middle distance runners. It represents a borderline insurmountable chasm, and it’s unlikely Kipyegon will dip below four minutes on that track this June. All that said, we’re sure as hell going to be tuning in with great interest to watch her try, and see just how fast she can go. Sub-four isn’t impossible; it’s unlikely, and that’s why this makes for such a compelling concept.

There’s likely a subset of more optimistic Lap Counters out there who have preemptively scrawled “first women’s sub-four mile” under a few days in June on their wall calendars. Those of you who fall into this camp need no further pep talk. Go forth and enjoy what may be the most exciting day of your life.

No, this section is for the jaded, the haters, the doubters, the skeptics, the brand-exhausted, and those who felt personally vindicated when Kipchoge failed to break two-hours in his first billed sub-two marathon attempt.

There is nothing inherently wrong with viewing the whole Breaking4 thing through that lens, and without listing them here, there are dozens of reasonable issues one might have with the whole spectacle. But like it or not, it’s happening – and it’s getting attention.

You can do your best to avoid Breaking4 discourse over next few months, only occasionally scoffing or shaking your head when faced with the fanfare. But truthfully, you will almost certainly be subsumed—fully or partially—by the hype train, to the point of begrudgingly firing up the live stream of Kipyegon’s shot at a sub-four.

Once there, consider the following: 

• Kipyegon has little left to accomplish from conventional achievements. She has both the 1500m/mile world records, Olympic and World golds, and not much left on the to-do list at the distance. Aside from moving outside her prime distance, when was the last time we saw her try something truly new?

• Should she fall off pace, you then are treated to the heroically humanizing effort of the event’s GOAT struggling to the finish line—when was the last time we saw Kipyegon anything other than in-control and composed at the conclusion of a race, win or lose?

• One of our biggest recurring complaints is that too often, the sport’s biggest stars are cagey or vague about their schedules and goals. Kipyegon deserves credit for headlining an exciting new event, and allowing for months of ramp-up to promote it.

• Aren’t you curious to see how far into 1609m Kipyegon can get at 3:59.99 pace? Is there anything you do in your own life where you are truly able to discern what your absolute limit is?

• Whether or not Kipyegon succeeds, the event will be an intriguing live-action trial of the benefits of various innovations that are largely discussed in theory. How much exactly does rotating pacers help? Will we see another leap forward in shoe technology? What other tricks do the sports scientists involved have cooking?

Ultimately, pursuit of perfection is sort of the reason we watch sports in the first place—this is just that experience, distilled to its purest, pupil-dilating form. But beyond the binary of success or failure is a lot of intriguing content to unpack with this proposal, and all it’ll cost is four-ish minutes of your viewing time.

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– Grand Slam Track returns this Friday, May 2nd, with the action continuing all weekend:

📺 Catch every GST Miami race from 6:00–9:00pm ET on Friday and Saturday, and 3:00–6:00pm ET on Sunday. Peacock will be streaming coverage all three days, with CW providing an over-the-air broadcast on Saturday and Sunday. 

🎟️ For our Floridian readers or those looking for a weekend getaway, tickets are still available. 

🗞️ And keep an eye on the CITIUS MAG newsletter—there’s an in-depth preview coming soon! 

– At Germany’s Adizero Road to Records meet/very fast brand activation, 10k world record-holder Agnes Ngetich became the women’s-only 10k record-holder to boot, going 29:27; Birhanu Balew was the fastest of four men under 27-minutes in the 10k, securing the W in 26:54; Emmanuel Wanyonyi backed up his recent GST 1500m win with a 3:52.45 mile victory; Nelly Chepchirchir’s 4:23.99 clocking gave her a comfortable win in the women’s mile; and Eisa Medina (14:48) and Yomif Kejelca (12:54) were your 5k winners.

– Welp. The 2025 World Road Running Championships, originally awarded to San Diego, have been formally canceled, instead of being relocated like initially announced. In this newsletter’s humble, collective, and hopefully uncontroversial opinion, it’s bad for a global championship to be canceled with no cited reason fewer than six months out.

– The USATF 1 Mile Championships in Des Moines were originally supposed to serve as the team selector for the now-canceled World Road Running Champs. But instead, all we got were two solid races. Krissy Gear unleashed a monstrous kick to take down a loaded women’s field in 4:23.98—a new American record—and Vince Ciattei (3:54.55) secured his third US road mile title thanks to a well executed final quarter.

– Much of the road mile women’s field stuck around in Iowa to square off again in the invitational mile contested during Drake Relays. And again, Krissy Gear emerged victorious (4:23.69). Might the Olympic steeplechaser be making a formal declaration of her full-time miler status? 

– Perhaps the biggest news out of Drake, however, was the launch of Ryan Crouser’s World Shot Put Series. CITIUS MAG’s Paul Hof-Mahoney wrote up a nice recap of a very fun, very unconventional, and very exciting evening of throwing in Des Moines. Spoiler alert: league commissioner Crouser lost! 

– U.S. half marathon champ Alex Maier continued his streak of stellar performances with a 2:08:33 victory at the Düsseldorf Marathon. About a minute back, Peter Lynch lowered the Irish record to 2:09:36. Kenya’s Leah Jeruto broke the tape in the women’s race in 2:25:23.

– Huge shoutout and congratulations to former CITIUS MAG intern Logan Auxier on his stellar 2:20:27 marathon debut, finishing second overall at his hometown Eugene Marathon. Making the whole team proud!

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