- Faith Kipyegon will race against a stellar women’s field in the 2025 Xiamen Diamond League on Saturday, April 26.
- Some of the athletes who are expected to give Kipyegon stiff competition include Uganda’s Halimah Nakaayi and Ethiopia’s Habitam Alemu.
- Besides Kipyegon, a number of other Kenyan athletes including Ferdinand Omanyala will race in the Xiamen Diamond League.
Several Kenyan athletes including Faith Kipyegon, Eliud Kipchoge, Beatrice Chebet and Ferdinand Omanyala will be in action in the last weekend of April 2025.
Kipyegon will run his first track event of the 2025 season in the Xiamen Diamond League that is scheduled to take place in China on Saturday, April 26.
The current 1500m world record holder is expected to be joined by the likes of Omanyala, Chebet and Caroline Nyaga in the first Diamond League event of the year.
Chebet, who had an extraordinary 2024 Paris Olympic Games where she won two gold medals for Kenya, and Nyaga will compete in the 5000m while Omanyala and Kipyegon are set to battle it out with deep fields in the 100m and 1000m respectively.
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Some of the sprinters that Omanyala will run against in Xiamen Diamond League are Botswana sensation Letsile Tebogo, South Africa’s Akani Simbine and United States’ international Christian Coleman.
Meanwhile, Kipyegon has been confirmed for the 1000m race, a discipline that she rarely features in.
In Xiamen, the 30-year-old will square it out for the top prize with a field that has the likes of the Ethiopian Habitam Alemu, Saron Berhe, and Nigist Tsige. The Paris Olympic Games 800m silver medalist Tsige Duguma will also be in the mix.
Apart from the Ethiopians, the athlete runs who will lock horns with Kipyegon include Uganda’s Halimah Nakaayi, Erin Wallace (Great Britain), Noelie Yarigo (Benin), Bendere Oboya (Australia), and Sarah Billings (Australia).
The main of these athletes, particularly Kipyegon, will be to break the long-standing 1000m world record of 2:28.98 that was set by Russian runner Svetlana Masterkova in 1996.
Kipyegon, who is expected to double in the 2025 World Athletics Championships, travels to Xiamen with a personal best of 2:29.15 in the distance.
List of athletes Kipyegon will race against in 2025 Xiamen Diamond League
- Habitam Alemu (Ethiopia)
- Saron Berhe (Ethiopia)
- Tsige Duguma (Ethiopia)
- Sarah Billings (Australia)
- Faith Kipyegon (Kenya)
- Shafiqua Maloney (St. Vincentian)
- Erin Wallace (Great Britain)
- Halimah Nakaayi (Uganda)
- Natoya Goule-Toppin (Jamaica)
- Nigist Getachew (Ethiopia)
- Abbey Caldwell (Australia)
- Bendere Oboya (Australia)
- Noelie Yarigo (Benin)
- Sage Hurta-Klecker (USA)