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Agencies
Zurich
Sixteen IAAF Diamond League champions will be crowned on Thursday at the Weltklasse in Zurich, the first of two 2017 IAAF Diamond League finals.
In all, 17 freshly-minted world champions and 14 reigning Olympic champions will be on the slate before a sell-out crowd of 25,000 at Zurich's Letzigrund Stadium.
In eight events, the two will be going head-to-head in the battle for the Diamond Trophy and each discipline's US$50,000 winner's check in a new championships-style format introduced this year.
Athletes competing in Zurich and those who will compete in the remaining 16 Diamond disciplines in Brussels on September 1 earned their spots in the finals by accumulating points at the 12 IAAF Diamond League meetings leading up to the two finals where the winners of each Diamond event will be crowned the 2017 series' champions.
Qatar's Mutaz Essa Barshim arrives undefeated this season in nine competitions, and fresh off a 2.40m world lead in Birmingham. He'll need to be pushed to go higher and perhaps even challenge his 2.43m lifetime best set at the Diamond League final in 2014. That's not likely in a season in which Barshim is head and shoulders, figuratively and almost literally, above the rest of the field.
Like Barshim, Luvo Manyonga of South Africa in the long jump is undefeated in eight long jump starts this season and comes armed with the year's four farthest jumps and seven of the best eight, topped with his 8.65m at altitude at home in late April and an 8.61m Diamond League record from Shanghai.
Should the South African perform below par, his compatriots Ruswhal Samaai and Godfrey Mokoena, the London bronze medallist and a past Diamond Trophy winner, respectively, could be in position to challenge.
As could Jarrion Lawson of the US, who reached an 8.44m season's best to take silver in London.
The women's 200m features a showdown between Jamaica's Olympic champion Elaine Thompson and Dutch Dafne Schippers, who earlier this month successfully defended her world title over the distance.
The field also includes Shaunae Miller-Uibo, the Olympic 400m champion. The last time the three lined up in the same 200m race, in the series' Eugene leg in late May, Miller-Uibo prevailed in 21.91.
Likewise, the men's 5000m will attract considerable attention with six-time world and four-time Olympic champion Mo Farah making his final appearance on the track.
It won't be victory lap, either, as he'll be taking on Ethiopian Muktar Edris, the man who beat him to the world title and ended a four year unbeaten streak over the distance in London 10 days ago.
