{"id":5115,"date":"2025-08-01T15:08:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T13:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brussels.diamondleague.com\/?p=5115"},"modified":"2025-08-05T13:48:22","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T11:48:22","slug":"world-record-attempt-and-five-olympic-champions-already-confirmed-for-49th-allianz-memorial-van-damme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brussels.diamondleague.com\/en\/world-record-attempt-and-five-olympic-champions-already-confirmed-for-49th-allianz-memorial-van-damme\/","title":{"rendered":"World Record Attempt and Five Olympic Champions already confirmed for 49th Allianz Memorial Van Damme"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The 24-year-old Kenyan <strong>Agnes Jebet Ngetich<\/strong> means business: she will start at the Allianz Memorial Van Damme with the ambition of breaking the 5000 metres world record once again. She was a front-row witness when Beatrice Chebet set the world record at 13:58.06 at the Diamond League meeting in Eugene at the beginning of July. Ngetich finished second in that race, which was also the third fastest time ever for that distance (14:01.29). This inspired her to go for the record herself. Ngetich is having a very consistent and successful season on the track, after previously excelling in cross-country and significantly improving the 10 km world record (road) last year. The Memorial thereby continues its tradition of very strong long-distance races.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now that a lot of Wanda Diamond League meetings have been completed, we are getting a better picture of the competition for the Memorial, the penultimate Diamond League meeting of the season. Big names to already look forward to are: Four Paris Olympic Champions. The programme in Brussels features the men&#8217;s high jump once again, including Gianmarco Tamberi as previously announced. He will face stiff competition from Olympic Champion <strong>Hamish Kerr<\/strong>, the New Zealander who took gold after a thrilling jump-off with Shelby McEwen. Kerr currently leads the Diamond League rankings. In the discus throw, all eyes will be on Jamaican <strong>Roj\u00e9 Stona<\/strong>, who not only took gold in Paris but also bettered the Olympic record taking it to 70.00 metres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the women&#8217;s competition, \u201cour\u201d Olympic Champion Nafi Thiam (who will be competing in the long jump at the Memorial) will be joined by German Olympic Shot Put Champion <strong>Yemise Ogunleye<\/strong>. National heroine <strong>Thea Lafond<\/strong> is also returning to Brussels: last summer, she made history by winning the first ever gold medal for the Caribbean island of Dominica in the triple jump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Six Olympic Champions&#8230;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There will be even more glittering Olympic gold on Friday 22 August: during the opening ceremony (at 7 pm), Tokyo Olympic Gymnastics Champion Nina Derwael, will take a special lap of honour. Derwael announced her retirement from top-level sport a few weeks ago. Belgian sports fans will now have the opportunity to bid farewell to Nina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once again, top-level sport and a great atmosphere are guaranteed at this 49th Allianz Memorial Van Damme. Don&#8217;t miss it! Tickets are available at <a href=\"https:\/\/shop.ticketing.cm.com\/allianz-memorial-van-damme-2025\/?language=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">our website.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In addition to Nafi Thiam, at least another four Olympic Champions will be attending the Allianz...","protected":false},"author":113,"featured_media":5110,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"city":[],"class_list":["post-5115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brussels-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brussels.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brussels.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brussels.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brussels.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/113"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brussels.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5115"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brussels.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5138,"href":"https:\/\/brussels.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5115\/revisions\/5138"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brussels.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brussels.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brussels.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brussels.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5115"},{"taxonomy":"city","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brussels.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/city?post=5115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}