Sprint stars Oblique Seville and Julien Alfred won their respective races on the opening day of the two-day Diamond League finals in Brussels on Friday.<\/p>\n
Back on the track, world 100m champion Seville overcame a poor start to win the blue riband race in 9.90sec ahead of Cameroon\u2019s Emmanuel Eseme.<\/p>\n
The Jamaican left it late to reel in the field, but looked comfortable as he crossed the line.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy start was far from the best, but the aim is always to win so I won\u2019t complain,\u201d said Seville.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t change too much after becoming a world champion. What I was doing clearly worked and this season is further proof of that. Next season I want to extend my title and dominate the Diamond League.\u201d<\/p>\n
St. Lucia\u2019s Olympic champion Alfred made short work of the women\u2019s 200m, winning in 21.79sec ahead of American Kayla White.<\/p>\n
On a night of six meeting records, the most impressive was arguably set by Botswana\u2019s world champion Busang Collen Kebinatshipi, who scorched to an impressive 43.40sec in the 400m.<\/p>\n
It was the joint-fifth fastest time ever run over the one-lap race, smashing by 0.23sec the previous best set in 2021 by American Michael Cherry, as the top four all posted sub-44sec times.<\/p>\n
Trinidad and Tobago\u2019s Jereem Richards set a national record in second ahead of the US pair of Jacory Patterson and Chris Bailey, both in personal bests.<\/p>\n
Not to be outdone, Kenya\u2019s world and Olympic 800m champion Emmanuel Wanyonyi won his fourth consecutive Diamond League title with victory in 1:41.80, smashing by 0.40sec the meet record set by Denmark\u2019s Wilson Kipketer in 1997.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday was all about winning and I knew that I would have to run 1:41 to win — and I did,\u201d said Wanyonyi.<\/p>\n
There was a second Kenyan meeting record, this time by Faith Cherotich, who won her third Diamond League title in a row in 8:51.61.<\/p>\n
Australian Cameron Myers came out top of a loaded 1,500m, winning in 3:30.14 as Norwegian wildcard Jakob Ingebrigtsen cracked down the home straight to end up fifth.<\/p>\n
American Chase Jackson also set a new area, meet and Diamond League record in winning the women\u2019s shot with 21.14m — an improvement of 12cm on her personal best.<\/p>\n
Jackson\u2019s teammate and world record holder Ja\u2019Kobe Tharp, still just 20, stormed to victory in the 110m hurdles in 13.03sec.<\/p>\n
Jamaica\u2019s Tajay Gayle went out to a season\u2019s best of 8.46m to edge Greek\u2019s Olympic champion Miltiadis Tentoglu by 6cm in the long jump, while Slovenia\u2019s Kristjan Ceh managed a meet record of 71.29m to outgun Mykolas Alekna in the men\u2019s discus.<\/p>\n
American Valarie Sion\u2019s five-year title-winning discus streak came to an end, however, as Feng Bin managed a best of 67.46m to become the first Chinese athlete to be crowned Diamond League champion since 2019.<\/p>\n
(With inputs from AFP)<\/p>\n
Published on Sep 05, 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sprint stars Oblique Seville and Julien Alfred won their respective races on the opening day of the two-day…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81103,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[30004,30341,30339,30337,30342,30338,13129,30340,109],"class_list":["post-81102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-seville","tag-brussels-diamond-league","tag-brussels-diamond-league-2026","tag-brussels-diamond-league-day-1","tag-brussels-diamond-league-latest","tag-diamond-league-2026-updates","tag-diamond-league-day-1","tag-oblique-seville","tag-oblique-seville-brussels-diamond-league","tag-seville"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}