Korir, Rotich to race at DL meet in Lausanne

Kenyans Emmanuel Korir and Ferguson Rotich are set to star in the men’s 800m at the Diamond League meeting in Lausanne that will bring together a golden array of Olympic champions.

Korir won gold at the Olympic Games earlier this month with Rotich taking silver and the pair will have five of the other top seven finishers from Tokyo for company.

A total of 19 Olympic gold medallists have signed up for the ‘Athletissima’ meeting, the ninth leg of the Diamond League, among them the Jamaican sprint queen Elaine Thompson-Herah.

Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Shericka Jackson, the compatriots who followed Thompson-Herah across the line in Tokyo and Eugene, will be seeking to get closer in another clean sweep this time.

The men’s 3000m event has five Kenyans among them Olympians Abel Kipsang and Nicholas Kipsang. They face a stacked field that features Olympic 10,000m champion Selemon Barega of Ethiopia and 10,000m bronze medallist Jacob Kiplimo, the Ugandan who won the world half marathon title last year.

Also in the line-up are the second and third finishers from the 5000m final in Tokyo, Canada’s Moh Ahmed and Paul Chelimo of the USA, and Ethiopia’s world and Olympic steeplechase silver medallist Lamecha Girma.

African champion Winny Chebet, a semi-finalist at the Tokyo Olympics, is the second fastest in the women’s 1500m line-up that will be led by Ethiopian Freweyni Gebreezibeher who was fourth at the Olympics.

Competition opens on Wednesday with a city-centre men’s high jump, but spectators will be deprived of a rematch between the two men who agreed to share gold in Tokyo.

While one Olympic champion, Italian Gianmarco Tamberi will be there, the other Mutaz Barshim withdrew after the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamin bin Hamad Al-Thani, asked the jumper to be his guest of honour at a celebratory function back home on Thursday.

Norwegian Karsten Warholm, who smashed the 400m hurdles world record in Tokyo, will run the 400m flat.