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Joshua Cheptegei wants to use the Oslo Diamond League meet to build momentum for the 2024 Olympic Games.
The Tokyo Olympic champion Cheptegei will look to build on his solid start to the season in the 5000m tonight.
Cheptegei had a modest sixth-place finish at the World Cross Country in Belgrade but he ran a 12:52.38 in Los Angeles earlier this month at the Grand Prix.
The three-time world champion is looking forward to his second time in Bislett.
“Last year I missed it and watched the race wishing I was here. I am still in love with the track, and I wasn’t tactically at my best in my first race, but I will be at my best for Paris. My target is the 10k as I don’t have an Olympic 10k title, but I will try for the double.
“Tomorrow is all about getting the fire back and starting to build momentum for Paris,” Cheptegei said in the pre-race presser.
Oscar Chelimo and Jacob Kiplimo are the other Ugandans who will also compete in the event alongside Cheptegei.
Peruth Chemutai shone at the 2024 Prefontaine Classic as she claimed the women’s 3000m steeplechase victory on Saturday night with 8:55.09.
It was Chemutai’s first-ever sub-9-clocking in the event and with that, she smashed her own National Record (9:01.45) set in 2021 during the finals of the Olympic games where she claimed gold.
It was the second Diamond League race for the 24-year-old Ugandan having competed in the Xiamen meeting last month where she clocked 9:12.99, finishing in 3rd place.
With that victory and world-leading time, Chemutai looks to be getting ready to defend her Olympic title in Paris as the games approach.
The Kenyan duo of Beatrice Chepkoech and Faith Cheroitich who finished ahead of Chemutai in Xiamen came second and third at Heyward Field in 8:56.51 and 9:04.45 respectively.
Meanwhile, Halima Nakaayi who registered victory at the Continental Tour Gold event barely two weeks ago struggled in the Women’s 800m.
Nakaayi clocked 1:58.18, good enough for a fifth-place finish.
The next Diamond League event will be on Thursday, 30th May in Oslo where Ugandan long-distance stars Joshua Cheptegei and Jacob Kiplimo will compete in the men’s 5000m.
Halimah Nakaayi registered victory in the Women’s 800m at the Continental Tour Gold event at Drake Stadium in Los Angeles on Saturday.
The former world champion had the smallest margin of victory on day two, winning the 800m in 1:57.56, only six-thousands of a second ahead of Tsige Duguma of Ethiopia. It’s also the world-leading time over the event.
Nakaayi thus set a new National Record slashing microseconds off her previous best of 1:57.62 set last year at the Olympic Stadium in London.
The next stop for the Ugandan will be Eugene, Oregon where she will compete in the Diamond League next weekend.
Meanwhile, Joshua Cheptegei and Jacob Kiplimo finished 3rd and 4th respectively in the 5000m race on Friday. The Ugandans were behind Ethiopians Selemon Barega and Berihu Eragawi.
The two Ugandan long-distance stars will go head-to-head again in Oslo on May 30th in the Diamond League meet.
Ugandan sprinter Tarsis Orogot Orogot shattered his own 200m National Record over the distance at SEC Championship in Gainesville on Saturday night.
The University of Alabama athlete claimed gold in the men’s 200-meter dash behind a personal-best 19.75. The junior recorded an NCAA-leading time and the third-fastest time in collegiate history.
The performance also secured Orogot the Ugandan national record, the East African record, a meet record and a University of Alabama school record.
At the same championships, Orogot finished fifth in the men’s 100-meter dash with a personal-best 10.06 which is also the fourth-fastest time in school’s history.
Orogot will return to action May 22-25 for the 2024 NCAA Outdoor East Preliminaries in Lexington, Kentuky.
Halima Nakaayi will start her international season at the Doha meeting of the Wanda Diamond League on Friday 10th May at Khalifa International Stadium.
The 29-year-old Ugandan middle-distance runner will be returning to track where she won her 800m world title in 2019.
Nakaayi has so far run in two major events this year. She won silver at the African Games in March clocking a time of 1:58.59 but was a second slower at the Kip Keino Classic last month where she posted 1:59.89.
In Doha, Nakaayi will be joined on the line by 2023 world champion Mary Moraa of Kenya and veteran Natoya Goule-Toppin of Jamaica as well as Great Britain’s Jemma Reekie who will be running at her first major event this year.
Moraa goes into the race as the favourite but Nakaayi, Reekie and Goule-Toppin will pose a challenge for that top spot as will Ethiopia’s Habitam Alemu.
Race time is 7:13 pm, EAT
Meanwhile, another Ugandan runner Loyce Chekwemoi will compete in the women’s 5000m at the meet.
Chekwemoi was second runner-up at the National Cross Country Championship held in Tororo in February this year. She also competed in the women’s senior event at the 45th World Cross Country Championship in March finishing 9th.
It will be the first 5000m race for the 17-year-old who has been largely competing in the 3000m Steeplechase in her youth career.
Ugandan middle-distance runner Halima Nakaayi will compete in the 800m at the Eugene meeting of the Wanda Diamond League on Saturday, 25th May.
The former World Champion will take the Heyward Field track at the Prefontaine Classic alongside some big names in women’s middle-distance running.
Athing Mu of the USA, Great Britain’s Keely Hodgkinson, Natoya Goule-Toppin of Jamaica, World number one Mary Moraa of Kenya and African champion Tsige Duguma from Ethiopia will all line up in what will be a very competitive race.
Nakaayi has run in two major events this year. She won silver at the African Games in March clocking a time of 1:58.59 but was a second slower at the Kip Keino Classic last month where she posted 1:59.89.
Moraa and Duguma have both run under 1:58 this season while Mu ran a national record 1:54.97 on the same track last year and that could make the race fast-paced.
The meet will help Nakaayi continue to prepare for the Paris Olympic games as she looks to put behind her a fair share of bad luck experienced in the last couple of World Championships and the Birmingham Commonwealth Games.
Race time will be 12:34am, EAT (Sunday, 26th May).
Peruth Chemutai will take the track of the Heyward Field at the University of Oregon to compete in her second meet of the 2024 Wanda Diamond League season.
The 2020 Olympic champion will take on some of the best and rising steeplechasers in the world including African and World Champion Beatrice Chepkoech of Kenya on Saturday, 25th May at the Eugene meeting.
Chemutai clocked 9:05.54 the last time she ran on this track in 2022 and will be looking to better her performance as she continues to prepare for the Paris Olympics.
The 24-year-old Ugandan competed in the Xiamen meeting last month. She clocked her season best 9:12.99 finishing in 3rd place behind Chepkoech and Faith Cheroitich who will also line up in Eugene.
A silver medalist at the African Games, Chemutai will be running in her fourth major event this year.
USA’s Courtney Frerichs who ran a personal best of 8:57.77 on the same track back in 2021 as well as Winfred Mutile Yavi of Bahrain who also registered a personal 8:50.66 at the same venue last year are the other top athletes on the entry list.
The biggest long-distance stars from Uganda, Joshua Cheptegei and Jacob Kiplimo, will be in action in the 5000m at the Wanda Diamond League meeting in Oslo on Thursday, 30th May.
Cheptegei will be looking to emulate the form that saw him break the world record with 12:35.36 at the Diamond League meeting in Monaco in 2020 and a year later win Olympic gold in Tokyo.
Cheptegei will be joined in Oslo by compatriot Jacob Kiplimo who will only be looking for his second Diamond League victory having won the 3000m race in Rome four years ago.
Current world number one Yomif Kejelcha and 2021 Wanda Diamond League champion Berihu Aregawi, both Ethiopian, are also among the starters in what promises to be a race for the ages at the sixth leg of the 2024 season.
Hagos Gebrhiwet and Telahun Haile Bekele are the other Ethiopians confirmed for the race.
Henrik Ingebrigtsen, a local favourite, is also on the entry list as well as Guatemala’s Luis Grijalva and Switzerland’s Dominic Lokinyomo Lobalu.
Ugandan sprinter Tarsis Orogot secured Olympic Qualification in the men’s 200m.
Orogot ran a National Record and Personal Best of 19.90 in 200m at the Tom Jones Memorial Classic in Gainesville, Florida on Saturday.
The meet featured the cream of college athletics talent plus more established names taking part in Olympic Development (OD) races.
Orogot was the only athlete to run sub-20 in the Invitational Event over the distance.
The University of Alabama athlete also holds the 200m Indoor National Record (20.17) set at the Don Kirby Invitational in Albuquerque, Boston last year.
World Athletics announced on Wednesday that it will start awarding prize money at the Olympic Games.
According to a statement from the federation, a total prize pot of 2.4 million dollars has been ring-fenced from the International Olympic Committee’s revenue share allocation, which is received by World Athletics every four years.
The revenue will be used to reward athletes who win a gold medal in each of the 48 athletics events in the Paris Olympic Games with US$50,000.
“The introduction of prize money for Olympic gold medallists is a pivotal moment for World Athletics and the sport of athletics as a whole, underscoring our commitment to empowering the athletes and recognising the critical role they play in the success of any Olympic Games,” World Athletics President, Sebastian Coe, said.
“This is the continuation of a journey we started back in 2015, which sees all the money World Athletics receives from the International Olympic Committee for the Olympic Games go directly back into our sport.”
This initiative by World Athletics also includes a firm commitment to extend the prize money at a tiered level, to Olympic silver and bronze medal winners at the LA 2028 Olympic Games.
“We started with the Olympic dividend payments to our Member Federations, which saw us distribute an extra US$5m a year on top of existing grants aimed at athletics growth projects, and we are now in a position to also fund gold medal performances for athletes in Paris, with a commitment to reward all three medallists at the LA28 Olympic Games.
“While it is impossible to put a marketable value on winning an Olympic medal, or on the commitment and focus it takes to even represent your country at an Olympic Games, I think it is important we start somewhere and make sure some of the revenues generated by our athletes at the Olympic Games are directly returned to those who make the Games the global spectacle that it is,” Coe added.
The payment of prize money will depend upon the World Athletics ratification process, including athletes undergoing and clearing the usual anti-doping procedures.
In Paris, each individual Olympic champion will receive US$50,000. Relay teams will receive the same amount, to be shared among the team.
However, the format and structure of the LA28 Olympic bonuses will be announced nearer the time.