Men’s Shot Put

Everyone, please graciously doff your caps to the great Joe Kovacs for refusing to throw in the towel after USAs didn’t go his way and, instead, using the rest of his 2025 season to prove to everyone why the competition in Tokyo will be worse without him there.

Wins in Budapest and Lausanne showed the world that one bad day in Eugene didn’t suddenly mean he’s washed, and picking up a fourth Diamond League title in 22.46m also showed his competitors that they should be lucky he won’t be at Worlds. The 36-year-old flat-out dominated this field, with the two best marks of the day and all five legal throws over 21.60m. It’s disappointing that his season ended today and not two weeks from now, but a silver lining is that apparently USAs pissed him off enough to maybe do an indoor season next year, so that’s awesome!

Of the Tokyo-bound men in the field, Payton Otterdahl was the only one to break 22m, going 22.07m. Otterdahl’s U.S. teammate Tripp Piperi finished fourth at 21.84m, the fifth-time this year he’s gone over his preseason PB, while world leader Leo Fabbri failed to defend his Diamond League title with a 21.47m, sixth-place finish.

Side note: Rajindra Campbell, another Tokyo non-factor given his allegiance transfer to Turkey, finished third today at 21.87m. It’s so strange to think that as we head to Worlds, two thirds of last year’s Olympic podium will be absent while the winner — Ryan Crouser — will be opening his season there and is a total unknown. The medal table is guaranteed to look very different this year.

Women’s Shot Put

Chase Jackson’s hunt for 21m today got derailed thanks to a 20.26m toss from Jessica Schilder to take the win and Diamond League crown, but that wasn’t even the most interesting part of this competition. In fact, the most interesting part of the competition happened over an hour after the final throw was taken.

When it first seemed like the dust had settled, Sarah Mitton had defended her Diamond League trophy with a huge second-round effort of 20.67m, just a single centimeter off her PB. Schilder sat in second while Jackson, whose best mark on the day was 20.08m, was third. However, Mitton’s bomb was overturned and ruled a foul on protest. She had managed to hop around and exit the back of the circle, which every thrower has been told to do since the day they first picked up an implement, but she was out of the ring before her shot landed in the sector. Because of that ruling, it means Mitton has now gone two years in a row with a huuuuuge mark taken off the board in the DL final and Schilder becomes only the fourth Dutch athlete to win the biggest diamond in all the land.

It’s hard to know exactly what this means when looking ahead towards Tokyo, other than the fact that all three of these women are in fantastic shape. Jackson’s first throw was her best by a significant margin, landing just shy of the 21m line, but it also landed on sector line, negating the mark. She’s been dealing with a finger injury since prior to USAs and said post-meet she plans to see a specialist in this homestretch before Worlds. Mitton still put together a strong series, with the worst of her four legal throws being 19.82m, and she’s clearly capable of nailing a big one if she can stay in the ring.

Women’s High Jump

With the completely subjective title of “World Championship favorite” up for grabs today, Nicola Olyslagers put together one of the best series in high jump history to win her first Diamond League title. The smiley Aussie made bar after bar look like child’s play, recording first-attempt clearances six heights in a row, including an eventual Oceania record of 2.04m. She got ahead of world record holder Yaroslava Mahuchikh after the Ukrainian superstar needed two attempts to get over 2.02m and passed 2.04m before both women missed all three attempts at 2.06m. Olyslagers has been far more level with the defending World and Olympic champ than she was last year, but a clean sheet like this one might be enough to put her fully ahead in the pecking order ahead of Tokyo.

In addition to a thrilling battle between the top two, the rest of this competition was awesome. Morgan Lake became the first British woman to clear 2 meters, popping over the bar on her first attempt after taking all three tries to equal her PB of 1.97m. Fourth-placer Yuliia Levchenko, like Olyslagers, opened her series with six straight first-time clearances before needing two to get over 2.00m, which she accomplished for the first time in over five years. Even fifth-place finisher Christina Honsel got over 1.97m, the third-best mark of her career. For reference, that’s better than the fifth-place mark at any global championship, indoor or out, since Doha back in 2019.

Men’s Pole Vault

This competition was not a super pretty one, but the result was exactly what you’d expect. For the fifth year in a row, Mondo Duplantis is leaving the Diamond League final as the victor, but at an unceremonious (for him) 6.00m. In a rarity, Duplantis needed to rely on countback to beat Manolo Karalis. On one hand, you could say Karalis is closing the gap. On the other hand, you could say “Mondo’s gonna be 30cm higher than this in two weeks.” And neither one of those takeaways would be incorrect.

Kurtis Marschall and Menno Vloom also had the bad day bug, with both men ending their runs early with three misses at 5.80m. Sam Kendricks was able to get over 5.80m, which constitutes a pretty good day for him this year, as seen by him tearing the other direction down the runway when the bar stayed up. He took a crack at 6.00m but retired with one attempt left, wrapping up a nice little confidence booster before he heads to Japan.