{"id":614770,"date":"2026-09-05T00:02:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T00:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/614770\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T00:02:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T00:02:12","slug":"amy-hunt-left-trailing-by-julien-alfred-in-womens-200m-diamond-league-final-athletics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/614770\/","title":{"rendered":"Amy Hunt left trailing by Julien Alfred in women\u2019s 200m Diamond League final | Athletics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Britain\u2019s Amy Hunt was given a jolting reminder of the gap between her and the world\u2019s very best female sprinters as she finished nearly half a second behind Julien Alfred in the Diamond League 200m final.<\/p>\n

But afterwards Hunt insisted that coming third in a season\u2019s best time of 22.16sec, on tired legs on a dank Brussels night, amounted to one of the better races of her career.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve shown the last few 200s, I\u2019m getting a lot stronger, and I think I was probably one of the closest athletes up to my personal best tonight,\u201d said Hunt, who won four European gold medals last month in Birmingham. \u201cSo on a very freezing cold night in northern Europe, in September, at 10pm \u2013 I think that\u2019s probably one of the best 200s I\u2019ve ever done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Certainly there were plenty of signs for optimism as Hunt made a fast start and was in touch with Alfred around the bend. But then the St Lucian, who won 100m gold in the Paris Olympics, applied the afterburners to take victory in 21.79, with Kyla White of the US second in 22.00 as Hunt faded.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the closest I\u2019ve ever been to Julien on the bend, and I thought: \u2018Oh my gosh, if I had completely fresh legs, I could really take you on right now,\u2019\u201d said Hunt. \u201cAnd that\u2019s such an exciting thing to me because she\u2019s such an incredible athlete. She\u2019s so fierce, but also kind. And to know that that was probably the best first half of the race I\u2019ve ever put together makes it really, really exciting for next season.\u201d<\/p>\n

The race of the night came in the men\u2019s 1500m as the Australian Cameron Myers found his way out of a box on the home straight, swerved between Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Phanuel Koech, and then got his nose in front to win in 3:30.14.<\/p>\n

It was vindication of sorts for Myers, who was a little disappointing in taking Commonwealth Games silver in the mile behind Josh Kerr<\/a> in Glasgow last month. But there was also encouragement for Ingebrigtsen, even though he ran out of steam in the final 30 metres, as his time of 3:30.52 was the quickest since his comeback after missing 11 months due to an achilles injury.<\/p>\n

Emmanouil Karalis broke Mondo Duplantis\u2019s Diamond League pole vault record. Photograph: Piroschka Van De Wouw\/Reuters<\/p>\n

This Diamond League final also doubled as the 50th memorial meeting to be staged in memory of Ivo Van Damme, the brilliant Belgian athlete who won silver medals over 800m and 1500m at the 1976 Olympics before dying in a car accident later that year, aged just 22.<\/p>\n

After a lengthy tribute to Van Damme, several of the famous athletes to grace this track \u2013 including the nine-time Olympic champion Carl Lewis \u2013 were paraded in front of the crowd and Philippe, King of the Belgians.<\/p>\n

Lewis had taken his place next to the king in time to see the Jamaican world champion Oblique Seville take the men\u2019s 100m in 9.90sec, recovering from a poor start to beat the Commonwealth champion Emmanuel Eseme by three-hundredths of a second.<\/p>\n

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Soon afterwards another world champion, Emmanuel Wanyonyi, had the crowd standing to applaud as he destroyed a strong field to set a meeting record of 1:41.80 in the men\u2019s 800m.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday was all about winning and I knew that I would have to run 1:41 to win and I did,\u201d said Wanyonyi, who finished nearly a second ahead of the Algerian Djamel Sedjati, with Britain\u2019s Ben Pattison fifth in 1:44.29. \u201cThe conditions weren\u2019t ideal tonight. The wind didn\u2019t bother me that much, I was happy it stopped raining.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elsewhere Busang Collen Kebinatshipi won the men\u2019s 400m in 43.40, breaking his own Diamond League record, while Emmanouil Karalis broke Mondo Duplantis\u2019s meeting record by clearing 6.12m in the pole vault. But there was disappointment as Duplantis pulled out beforehand with tightness in his leg and admitted that his chances of making the new $10m Ultimate Championships in Budapest next week were in question.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe worst possible thing to do is having to pull out of a competition,\u201d said Duplantis. \u201cMy head is everywhere right now. It\u2019s super difficult but that\u2019s the life of an athlete. I try to stay calm and positive. We will see if I can make it to the Ultimate Championships. I don\u2019t have the answer right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two-day meeting will conclude on Saturday, with Audrey Werro\u2019s attempt on the women\u2019s 800m world record topping the bill. There should be British success too, with Georgia Hunter Bell favourite to win the women\u2019s 1500m \u2013 and a first prize of $60,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain\u2019s Amy Hunt was given a jolting reminder of the gap between her and the world\u2019s very best…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-614770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}