Irish 400m national record holder Rhasidat Adeleke will return to the outdoor track for the first time since July last year when she competes in the Diamond League meeting in Shanghai, China on 16 May.
The 23-year-old will compete in a stacked women’s 400m field that includes last year’s world bronze medallist Salwa Eid Naser and the 2025 World Indoor champion Amber Anning who Adeleke just out dipped in the Olympic Games the year prior.
Adeleke withdrew from the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo due to “lingering injuries and continuous setbacks”, but later confirmed a hamstring strain as her reason for being unable to contest the championships in the Japanese capital.
In the 2025 season the Tallaght native raced sparingly compared to her usually packed schedule, only competing three times over the 400m distance that saw her finish fourth in the Paris Games and claim a European silver in the same year.
Stacked 🤩
The #KeqiaoDL 🇨🇳 women’s 400m is going to be unmissable 💯
Salwa Eid Naser 🇧🇭
Amber Anning 🇬🇧
Nickisha Pryce 🇯🇲
Martina Weil 🇨🇱
Aaliyah Butler 🇺🇸
Roxana Gómez 🇨🇺
Rhasidat Adeleke 🇮🇪
Alexis Holmes 🇺🇸
Sada Williams 🇧🇧#DiamondLeague 💎 pic.twitter.com/0mXLOWo8ST
— Wanda Diamond League (@Diamond_League) April 10, 2026
So far in 2026, Adeleke has made a return to the track indoors, breaking her own Irish 300m record, clocking 36.30 seconds for the event and also competed in a 4x400m relay with her training partners at the Texas Relays at the start of the month, where they ran 3:35.25 for the event – no individual splits were published.
The rest of the Irish 4x400m squad will head to Botswana for the World Relays at the start of May, but Adeleke was chosen to skip the championships after securing qualification for the World Championships for both the women’s and mixed teams in last year’s competition.
The opening round of the Diamond League season was scheduled to take place in the Qatari capital of Doha on 8 May, but has been postponed until 19 June because of the ongoing conflict in the Gulf.