By David Melly
August 20, 2025
The clock is running out on the track and field regular season, and rather than limp to the finish line, it’ll wrap up with a manic sprint. In a few short hours, action kicks off in Lausanne, Switzerland, before the Diamond League circus heads north to Belgium on Friday. The last standing points will be spoken for and the fields will be set for next week’s Diamond League final in Zurich, where athletes stand to win up to $50,000 in prize money and a wild-card berth to the World Championship.
The sprints will continue to be defined, at least partially, by the absence of two big names, as neither Kishane Thompson nor Julien Alfred will be in action. Olympic champ Noah Lyles continues to race back into shape, which is bad news for some because if he contests and wins the DL final in the 100m, that’s one less wild card for everyone else. Lyles is running the 100m in Lausanne but hasn’t shared his racing plans beyond then.
Brussels will feature another look at Melissa Jefferson-Wooden and Sha’Carri Richardson, but this time they’ll be taking on the great Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce over 100m. SAFP’s main highlight of the season has been a 10.91 third-place finish at the Jamaican Trials, but since then, she hasn’t broken 11 seconds or won a race, so she’ll likely be eager for a time and place improvement here. It’d be surprising to see her take down Jefferson-Wooden, but Jamaican and American sprint fans alike will be analyzing every step of her and Richardson’s races for signs of podium potential. For SAFP, that means a top-end speed in the middle meters that can supplement her historically unmatchable start, and for Sha’Carri, that means staying in her drive phase longer than two steps.
Speaking of women’s sprints, the 200m will feature a preview of two of the Americans with the best hopes of snagging a spot in Tokyo via Zurich. Brittany Brown and McKenzie Long—who finished fourth and fifth with the same time, 22.20, at USAs—are entered in Lausanne and are currently ranked sixth and seventh, one point behind fellow American Jenna Prandini in the DL standings. Strong runs here from the duo would not only secure their spots on the Zurich start line, but also shed some light on who may have the best shot at winning the whole shebang next week. (In practice, Brown really has two shots at a spot as Anavia Battle, who finished second at USAs, is also second in the Diamond League standings, and her win would also get Brown on the team.)
Similarly, Brussels will feature Vernon Norwood and Jacory Patterson in the 400m. Norwood, the fourth placer from USAs, has three paths to a wild card if Patterson, the U.S. champ, gets into the DL final (he’s currently ninth) and either they or Chris Bailey (U.S. runner up currently leading the DL standings) comes out with the win.
American distance fans will be glued to the TV (or whatever janky streaming situation you have hooked up at home) for the latter half of Lausanne, which features Graham Blanks and Grant Fisher in the 5000m (plus U.S.-based Guatemalan Luis Grijalva) and Bryce Hoppel and Josh Hoey in the 800m. Friday’s program will feature two 1500ms and a women’s 5000m, plus a weird quasi-world record attempt with Winfred Yavi in the rarely-run steeplechase mile. Yared Nuguse is entered in the Brussels 1500m with high hopes, since his path to Tokyo necessarily runs through the Diamond League final, but since he’s now comfortably in fourth after his win in Silesia, it’s not a do-or-die. With no Gudaf Tsegay, Beatrice Chebet, or Faith Kipyegon on the start list, the women’s 1500m offers a rare chance at an American DL win (Nikki Hiltz, Sinclaire Johnson, and Heather MacLean are entered), but they’ll have to go through the likes of Nelly Chepchirchir (undefeated on the season) and Diribe Welteji (3:51.44 SB) first.
Intriguingly, Grant Holloway is not on the entry list for the 110m hurdles in Lausanne. Normally, Holloway is one of the safest bets for a win in pretty much any race he starts, but Holloway has had the rockiest season of his pro career to date. He’s been relatively consistent—running between 13.11 and 13.18 in five rounds of racing since June—but hasn’t returned to the highest of highs we’ve seen from the 4x global champion with a 12.81 PB and has yet to win a single 110H final this season. Holloway is not in line for a lane in Zurich, so it’s entirely possible that we won’t get any more data points out of the Olympic champ until the first round of racing in Tokyo.
When the dust settles on tracks across Europe this weekend, we’ll have our clearest picture yet of who’s a true contender and who’s a long shot for a coveted World gold. We’re officially seven days out from the DL final and a mere 24 away from the first rounds of racing in Tokyo, so while there could be some clutch surprise performances on the horizon yet, we generally have a pretty good sense of the pecking order by this time in the season. But that doesn’t make these next few days of racing boring; just the opposite: the narrowing window for change just means that every one of these performances becomes more and more indicative of what we can expect when medals are on the line.
David Melly
David began contributing to CITIUS in 2018, and quickly cemented himself as an integral part of the team thanks to his quick wit, hot takes, undying love for the sport and willingness to get yelled at online.
