Mary Moraa up against standout rivals in Doha Diamond League duel
Mary Moraa will come up against standout rivals during the Doha Diamond League showdown on Friday, May 10, 2024.
The World champion will face the World Indoor Championships silver medallist Jemma Reekie of Great Britain in the 800m at the Seashore Group Doha Meeting.
Moraa, who is the Kenyan record holder over 400m (50.38), won the All-African Games 400m title in March 2024 and lowered her personal best from 2:03.27 in 2020 to 1:56.03 with victory at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest (2023).
Moraa's rivals
The 23-year-old - who has become known for her dancing celebrations - finished third at the World Athletics Championships in Oregon, won Commonwealth Games gold in Birmingham and was crowned Wanda Diamond League champion.
On the other hand, Reekie is a British indoor mile record holder (4:17.88) who rose to prominence as a double gold medallist over 800m and 1500m at the 2019 European Under-23 Championships. She has since delivered a series of impressive championship performances including finishing runner-up at the 2024 World Indoors in Glasgow and reaching the finals of the Olympic Games in Tokyo (2021) and World Championships in Budapest (2023), finishing fourth and fifth respectively.
Her personal best over 800m is 1:56.90, the fourth-fastest ever by a British woman.
While Moraa has defeated Reekie five times out of seven in their most recent head-to-heads, Reekie is fast returning to the form that saw her narrowly miss the Olympic podium in Tokyo.
World Indoor Championships bronze medallist Noelie Yarigo of Benin, Olympic finalist and Jamaican record holder Natoya Goule-Toppin, and 2019 world champion Halimah Nakaayi of Uganda are the other names in the field.
