Diamond League: Timothy Cheruiyot looking to shine after injury recovery
After recovering from an injury, Timothy Cheruiyot is looking to shine in the Doha Diamond League set for Friday, May 10, 2024.
The 28-year-old is hoping to make a statement win in the Qatari city ahead of his trials for the Olympic Games in Paris in August.
“The men’s 1500m is one of the most competitive and exciting events in athletics right now.
“While I was proud to have represented Kenya at my fifth consecutive World Championships last summer, it took me some time to recover from a knee injury that was affecting my performance.
"My race fitness isn’t quite where I’d like it to be at this time of year, but the most important thing is that I’m healthy and happy. I’m looking forward to racing in Doha – a country where I have such wonderful memories of winning world gold – and putting down an important marker as I build towards the Kenyan Olympic trials," Cheruiyot said.
Rivals
Cheruiyot was a 1500m silver medallist at the World Athletics Championships in London in 2017 before he upgraded to gold in Doha. He finished sixth in the Eugene finals in 2022 and has a personal best of 3:28.28 (2021).
The short-distance runner, who opened his season with a 1:46.56 800m at the Kip Keino Classic in Nairobi on April 20, will line up against world bronze medallist Narve Gilje Nordas of Norway.
Teenage record-breakers Biniam Mehary of Ethiopia and Kenya's Reynold Cheruiyot will also be competing in Doha.
Nordas excelled in 2023 with lifetime bests across a range of distances from 1500m (3:29.47) to 5000m (13:05.38). In the World Championships in Budapest, he won bronze which saw him finish just three one-hundredths of a second behind countryman Jakob Ingebrigtsen.
Mehary, 17, and Cheruiyot, 19, the world under-20 1500m champion and a finalist at the 2023 World Championships - have also made the headlines over the past 12 months setting world age-group records over 1500m indoors (3:34.83) and mile (3:48.06), respectively.
Two-time world indoor 1500m champion and Ethiopian indoor record holder Samuel Tefera; Spain’s 1500m indoor record holder Adel Mechaal, fifth in the Tokyo Olympic Games; and Olympic and World Championships fourth-place finisher Abel Kipsang of Kenya are the other notable stars to race in the 1500m.
The Seashore Group Doha Meeting is the third meeting of the 2024 Wanda Diamond League.
