Okay, technically the men’s 800m in Lausanne isn’t a Diamond League race and won’t count towards the season scores, but it’s still going to be insane. That’s because every two-lap race on the Diamond League circuit since the calendar turned to July has been ridiculously fast. That trend is almost guaranteed to continue on Thursday.

The men’s field features five of the eight competitors from the Olympic final (aka the fastest 800m race in history) and four men boast PBs in the 1:41s. The rematch between Olympic champion Emmanuel Wanyonyi and silver medalist Marco Arop will be fascinating to watch. They were separated by only .01 seconds in Paris in a race that saw them move to third and fourth on the all-time list. Since Arop beat out his Kenyan rival last year to win the World title in Budapest, he has failed to beat Wanyonyi each of the three times they’ve clashed. These two bring the absolute best out of each other every time they step on the track, as they have finished 1-2 in every race post-Worlds and both men have set PBs in every race. If they can keep that up this time, David Rudisha’s world record would certainly be under threat.

Bryce Hoppel will be entering this race hungry, as this will be his first race back since his American record of 1:41.67 that moved him to seventh on the all-time list finished off the Olympic podium. The World Indoor champ didn’t race in either the Paris or Monaco Diamond Leagues in July, which produced a handful of the fastest times ever, so this will be his first taste of a race of this caliber without the added pressure of it being an Olympic final. He and Gabriel Tual, who sits just ahead of Hoppel on the all-time list and finished sixth in front of a home crowd at the Olympics, will have their hearts set on disrupting Wanyonyi and Arop’s party at the top. Mohamed Attaoui of Spain has run under 1:42.10 on two occasions this year, but Thursday could be the first time the 22-year-old becomes the 11th man in history to run in 1:41 territory.

The women’s field is more about depth than some of the historically fast times we’ve seen from the men’s side, but that doesn’t mean it’s lacking starpower by any means. World champ and Olympic bronze medallist Mary Moraa is always one of the strongest contenders whenever she toes the line, but she only has the third-best PB and season’s best among this week’s racers.

Jemma Reekie ran 1:55.61 and entered the ranks of the 25 fastest women in history at the London Diamond League last month, but she was the first woman out of the final in Paris and will be guaranteed to be out for blood tomorrow. Jamaica’s Natoya Goule-Toppin is another athlete with 1:55 credentials who failed to make the final in Paris. She was in a similar situation last year, finding herself out in the semis in Budapest, but she put together a stellar finish to her 2023 campaign with a 1:55.96 clocking at the Diamond League final. If she can find a way to do the same in 2024, she could be dangerous in Lausanne and meets to come.

Olympic champion Keely Hodgkinson didn’t make the trip to Switzerland this week, but her training partner Georgia Bell did. One of the biggest surprises of the season so far, Bell became an Olympic bronze medallist in the 1500m in her return to professional running this year. She fits right in amongst this elite two-lap field, however, as her 1:56.28 clocking from the London Diamond League has her positioned as the third-fastest woman in the world this year.

On the American side of things, Olympians Nia Akins and Allie Wilson will be out for redemption after Akins just missed out on the Olympic final and Wilson went out in the repechage round in Paris.

Sprinting superstars set to light track on fire

The men’s 400m on Thursday lost a bit of its firepower after Olympic champion Quincy Hall was removed from the start list earlier this week, but it’s still going to be an absolute must-watch. Olympic silver medalist Matthew Hudson-Smith and bronze medalist Muzala Samukonga are set to do battle over the one lap distance after they were part of the fastest podium ever two weeks ago.

They’re the only men in the field that have broken 44 seconds in the open 400m, but there are four men that could very well join their ranks if they have their best stuff on Thursday. Americans Vernon Norwood (44.10 PB, 43.26 split) and Bryce Deadmon (44.22 PB, 43.54 split), as well as Botswana’s Busang Kebinatshipi (44.43 PB, 43.39 split) and Great Britain’s Charlie Dobson (44.23 PB, 43.33 split) recorded blazing splits in the Olympic 4x400m relay final that show the potential for something truly special. If any of them feel like going with Hudson-Smith’s ridiculous first 200m and can hang on over the second half, they should find themselves in the 43-second range.

Kebinatshipi isn’t the only member of Botswana’s silver-medal relay team that will be competing Thursday, as Letsile Tebogo will be racing the 200m for the first time since becoming Olympic champion at the distance. It’s a tough field, but Tebogo should be a clear favorite.

In the midst of the ongoing battle between the AIU, WADA and USADA centered around him, Erriyon Knighton will continue to put his head down and run through the noise this week at his first Diamond League of the season. He’ll be joined by Fred Kerley, who’s only run one 200m race this season and sits T-35th on the world list at 20.17, but he just ran his fastest 100m race in two years to win Olympic bronze and has a PB of 19.76, so it wouldn’t be a shock if he can hang with the big dogs in the field.

Jereem Richards was the unlucky fourth-place finisher in the aforementioned historically fast 400m final in Paris, becoming the 16th-fastest man ever at 43.78. He drops back down the 200m this week for his first race since that major breakthrough, an event where he was the bronze medalist at the 2017 World Championships and made global finals in both Eugene and Tokyo.

The shortest men’s event this week will be the 110m hurdles, and the field is a who’s who of the best in the world. The entire Olympic podium will be in Lausanne, as well as Tokyo Olympic champ Hansle Parchment.

Even in a field this strong, all eyes will be on the new Olympic champion, Grant Holloway. Nobody has come particularly close to the three-time World champ this season, and the first thing everyone will be looking at whenever he races these next few weeks will be the clock. Holloway’s season has looked eerily similar to Aries Merritt’s 2012 campaign, where he closed his year out with a world record performance of 12.80 in Brussels. Both men won their Olympic titles on August 8th, and both men had five wind-legal sub-13 performances to their name that year at that point including the Olympic final. Merritt’s post-Olympic results were 12.95, 12.97, and finally 12.80, but his season’s best before he set the world record was “only” 12.92. Holloway ran 12.86 in June at U.S. Trials, so he could find himself on world record trajectory these next few weeks, as he looks to become the first man ever to dip into the 12.7s.

Ingebrigtsen’s back on the circuit, but so is Hocker

Jakob Ingebrigtsen hasn’t lost a 1500m race on the Diamond League circuit since September of 2021, but that streak just might be in jeopardy this week. The 23-year-old has been unflappable in paced, “regular season” races the last several years, but Olympic champion Cole Hocker could prove to be his toughest test yet.

Ingebrigtsen ran 3:26.73 in July and still ran a time that only 10 men have ever run despite fading badly and finishing fourth in Paris. It will take a herculean effort to take him down in this sort of race, where he’s been so comfortable for so long, but we just saw Hocker close his final 200m in 26.3 in a race that he won in 3:27.65. At his current fitness level, it will be unbelievably hard to stay out of range of his kick regardless of the pace. If anyone would be able to do that, though, it’d probably be a pissed off Jakob Ingebrigtsen.

Six other men in the field have dipped under 3:30 in their careers, including 2019 World champion Timothy Cheruiyot and 21-year-old American Hobbs Kessler, who is racing for the first time since dropping two seconds off his PB en route to a fifth-place finish at the Olympics. Cheruiyot and fellow Kenyan Brian Komen will be hoping this race goes better for them than the Olympic final did, where both men went with Ingebrigtsen’s early hot pace before fading badly, finishing in 11th and 12th, respectively.

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