Women’s Pole Vault

Going solely off of 2025 best clearances, this is an event where local fans can expect to see a Brit vying for the win. Molly Caudery’s indoor vault of 4.85m is the second highest mark registered this year. Following a fourth-place showing at World Indoors, Caudery has had a relatively abbreviated outdoor campaign, but secured wins in her two competitions, first at the Doha Diamond League meet, then most recently in Athens where she flew over the 4.80m bar, her outdoor season’s best.

Caudery’s stiffest competition ought to come from American Katie Moon. Caudery got the better of her in their matchup in Doha, where Moon finished second, but that’s the lone blemish on Moon’s outdoor season. She’s since won Diamond League meets in Rabat and Paris, and cleared 4.83m last month in California—that’s the highest outdoor mark of 2025.

Women’s 400m Hurdles

Femke Bol looks to continue her unbeaten streak in the Diamond League and extend it to 29 races. She is coming off a world-lead and meet record of 51.95 at the Monaco Diamond League, and as such, is heavily favored in this field.

Jasmine Jones dealt with a few injuries this spring and then jumped into action at Grand Slam Track: Philadelphia after missing the league’s first two events. She opened up with a 54.65 for the 400m hurdles and then clocked her first career 400m in 52.73, both second-place finishes, which were good enough to earn her the Slam title. This will be her first race since that weekend, so we’ll see what form she’s in ahead of USAs, because right now Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (52.07 SB); Dalilah Muhammad (52.58 SB) and Anna Cockrell (52.91) are making that event in Eugene a bit harder than last year when Jones was riding the momentum of the NCAA season.

Women’s High Jump

World record holder Yaroslava Mahuchikh is the only entrant with a season’s best north of 2 meters, but that doesn’t mean she’s invincible: in two of her last three competitions, she was bested by Aussie rival Nicola Olyslagers. While Olyslagers isn’t making the trip across the Channel after winning in Paris, her countrywoman Eleanor Patterson, who was third in Paris but beat Mahuchikh at World Indoors, is. She’ll be the biggest threat for Mahuchikh, the Olympic champion.

Interestingly, this is Mahuchikh’s first time competing at the London DL, despite the Ukrainian being a frequent presence on the circuit.

Men’s 800m

Monaco’s 800m race didn’t result in David Rudisha’s 1:40.91 world record going down, but it delivered the four fastest performances of the year with Olympic champion Emmanuel Wanyonyi taking the win in 1:41.44. He’s back to headline this field.

We’ll see if reigning World champion and Olympic silver medalist Marco Arop tests different tactics than in Monaco, where he ran conservatively by his standards, maybe expecting the aggressive pace to take its toll on the guys ahead of him. He ended up fifth in a season’s best of 1:42.73. 

All American eyes will be on 2019 World champion Donavan Brazier as he races in his first Diamond League since May 2022. Brazier has been away from the circuit for three years and as a result, has only ever raced five of the guys entered. Even then, hasn't raced: Marco Arop since the Doha Diamond League in May 2022; Bryce Hoppel since the 2021 U.S. Olympic Trials; Andreas Kramer or Max Burgin since the Stockholm Diamond League in Aug. 2020; or Mark English since the Millrose Games in Feb. 2020. For Brazier, this will be his first—and last—taste of international level racing before completing his final prep for the U.S. Championships.

Women’s 5000m

10,000m Olympic silver medalist Nadia Battocletti was slated to race this one but withdrew on Wednesday. That leaves us with a Diamond League staple of a top Ethiopian showdown featuring Medina Eisa, Chaltu Dida, and Hirut Meshesha, who have broken 14:30 on the season. Kenyan Margaret Akidor is coming off a big PB in the 5000m at the Pre Classic, where she ran 14:30.34 for fourth and could be in the mix for the win of this one. If it comes down to a test of footspeed, Meshesha and her 3:54.87 1500m PB could prove lethal.

Australian Rose Davies will be looking to improve her Australian national record and take it below 14:40 where it currently sits, whilst a group of Brits will be chasing that 14:50.00 World Championship standard, including Hannah Nuttall, who for the second year running is less than a second away, while the top GB distance runner Megan Keith is returning to form after injury over the winter. Most intriguing is Innes Fitzgerald, who is a massive talent at 19 years old and after coming third in her first ever Diamond League in Oslo a few weeks ago has been lopping chunks off her PBs in every race and is looking to break the 15 minute barrier.

Women’s Long Jump

The temptation in this event would be to view 2024 Paris silver medalist (and Tokyo champ) Malaika Mihambo as the favorite, but the 31-year-old German has had only a so-so start to 2025, with only one win in five outdoor competitions thus far. She’s trending in the right direction, however, improving her season’s best to 7.01m at the Prefontaine Classic to finish behind Tara Davis-Woodhall (who isn’t crossing the pond), but she’ll have two other jumpers to contend with who’ve cleared the 7-meter mark this season in Frenchwoman Hilary Kpatcha and Italian Larissa Iapichino. At the European Team Championships three weeks back, all three jumpers lined up and Iapichino came out with the win—and like Mihambo, her only most recent loss comes to Davis-Woodhall. Iapichino is likely the favorite, but it’ll be an intense battle.

The two Brits who could make things interesting are Jazmin Sawyers, who missed all of 2024 with an injury but is getting her feet (and sand) back under her with a 6.89m season’s best, and multi-event star Katarina Johnson-Thompson, whose specialty may be doing seven events in one meet but who has a particularly strong LJ resume.

Women’s 800m

This was an electric event at this meet last year as Keely Hodgkinson clocked a British record in 1:54.61 and helped push her compatriots Jemma Reekie and Georgia Hunter-Bell to personal bests. Hodgkinson was slated to headline this event—and realistically, the entire meet—but pulled out a few days ago as a precaution since she’s working her way back from a hamstring injury. She has not raced at all since winning the 800m gold medal at the Paris Games, so she’s almost coming up on a full year without seeing a start line.

Hunter-Bell (1:57.66 SB) and Reekie (1:58.66) are back and appear to be in good form. For Hunter-Bell—and her coaches Trevor Painter and Jenny Meadows—this could serve as a key performance indicator of which event she’ll focus on for the championship season ahead. Despite having won the Olympic bronze medal in the 1500m, she told me in Eugene, “we’ve been really able to do the 800m training and I’m making more headway in the 800m.”

Going by season’s best, the biggest threats to a British romp will be American Addy Wiley, who enters with the fastest mark of 2025 in the field at 1:57.55, and Olympic fourth-placer Shafiqua Maloney, who looked very strong winning the 800m at the Ed Murphey Classic last weekend in 1:58.13. Laura Muir is also entered in the race. She opened up her outdoor season with a quiet 2:03.41 in Oslo earlier this month.

Men’s 400m

With these events going back-to-back, the pressure will be on Matthew Hudson-Smith to try and keep a mini British winning streak going for the crowd if the 800m women persevere. He’s coming off a season’s best in 44.10 win at the Prefontaine Classic, which he called a “statement” victory. This will be the first time this season that he gets a shot at world leader Zakithi Nene of South Africa. The 27-year-old ran 43.76 at altitude at the Kip Keino Classic in Nairobi on May 31st and then followed it up with a 44.23 for second at the Rome Diamond League.

Women’s Mile

Initially, this looked like a showcase for the former mile world record holder Sifan Hassan to test her speed in the midst of her blossoming marathon career. But this week, Hassan’s camp announced her withdrawal from the meet, which opens the door for an entirely different set of narratives. Now, the clear favorite looks to be World Indoor 1500m champ Gudaf Tsegay, whose strength is in the longer distances but can still be a true killer over 1500m as well against anyone not named Faith Kipyegon.

Even for the 1500m specialists, this will be a slightly new angle, as Olympic silver medalist Jess Hull is running her first outdoor mile since going 4:15.34 at the 2023 Monaco Diamond League. And the last time Birke Haylom raced a mile, she broke the U20 world record in 4:17.13. 

American Sinclaire Johnson raced two indoor miles this season, but her last outdoor effort was in 2021. Coming off a 3:56.93 1500m at the Pre Classic and a strong 1000m last week in Monaco, Johnson will likely be looking to climb the U.S. all-time lists. A sub-4:20 would put her in at least the top nine all-time, and given that her 1500m from Pre converts roughly to 4:15/4:16 in the mile, Nikki Hiltz’s 4:16.35 American record isn’t out of the realm of possibility.

Men’s 100m

After Noah Lyles’s 19.88 win at the Monaco Diamond League, social media lit up with “NOAH LYLES IS BACK” posts. But how “back” is he? He'll be racing his first 100m since becoming Olympic champion when he lines up against Letsile Tebogo (10.03 SB), Oblique Seville (9.83 SB), and Ackeem Blake (9.88 SB). He’ll not only have to outrun those guys, but to win he’ll also need to snap Akani Simbine’s perfect three-for-three Diamond League 100m streak this season.

There’s no doubt that whatever the result of this race, there will be overreactions as to where Lyles currently falls among the pecking order of the world’s best 100m stars, and treatises written about why Kishane Thompson is the gold medal favorite, regardless. Lyles makes the sport so much more interesting because any time he steps out onto the track, an entire news and opinion cycle follows.