Diamond League reallocates disciplines in next meetings
Kiprono Ericson
Organisers of the Wanda Diamond League have announced that some disciplines will be re-allocated to other events in mid-August in order to give all athletes a fair chance of qualifying for the final.
With the two meetings to be held in China unable to go ahead as planned in August, athletes in some disciplines have been left with few opportunities to qualify for the Wanda Diamond Final in Zurich on September 8.
To qualify for the Diamond League final, each athlete needs to compete at least four times during the series in their chosen discipline.
“To give all athletes that opportunity, the Diamond League AG Board has been in discussion with Diamond League and Continental Tour one-day meetings to see if their programmes can accommodate one of the displaced disciplines,” says Petr Stastny, CEO of Diamond League AG.
Four meetings have come forward offering to add disciplines to their one-day programme.
The four disciplines include the women’s shot put, men’s long jump, women’s javelin and men’s discus and these disciplines have now been reallocated to other Wanda Diamond League and World Athletics Continental Tour meetings.
Other disciplines scheduled to take place in China, such as the men’s and women’s 100m, will not be reallocated as athletes already have more than four opportunities to compete in these disciplines elsewhere during the season.
The men’s long jump was reallocated to the BAUHAUS-Galan Wanda Diamond League meeting in Stockholm, which took place on July 4th.
The other three disciplines have been reallocated to World Athletics Continental Tour meetings scheduled to take place in mid-August, the same period during which the two Chinese events would have been held.
Athletes taking part in these reallocated competitions will earn Wanda Diamond League qualification points (8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1) and World Ranking points (GW points) as awarded in the Wanda Diamond League.
They will, however, not receive the prize money awarded by the host meeting.
The Diamond League final offers a total of $60,000(Sh 6 million) in prize money per discipline with $30,000 (Sh3 million) for each winner.
