Rhasidat Adeleke, the fourth-placed Olympian, is preparing to participate in the 400m final at the Diamond League event in Brussels this Friday, around five weeks following her Olympic achievement. The length of her outdoor season, which commenced over five months ago, is understandably causing some fatigue.
The summer season, unusually lengthy, climaxed with notable events such as the European Championships in Rome and the Paris Olympics. The last marathon event – the Brussels Memorial Van Damme – is also the final chapter of the 14 round Diamond League happenings, taking place in the King Baudouin Stadium at Belgium’s heart, across two nights.
Adeleke secured her final’s slot this Friday (at 7:04pm according to Irish time) following her numerous appearances throughout this summer’s Diamond League, notably her remarkable win in Monaco on the 12th of July, where she exhibited her best performance by running a 49.17 seconds sprint. She has yet to surpass this.
The competitors in Brussels include five out of the eight finalists from the Olympic final at the Stade de France on the 9th of August. This includes Marileidy Paulino of the Dominican Republic and Salwa Eid Naser of Bahrain, who both claimed gold and silver respectively.
Natalia Kaczmarek from Poland, who pipped Adeleke to the Olympic bronze, will not be participating, having ended her comparably prolonged season. Kaczmarek also claimed the European title in Rome, in which Adeleke secured a silver with a national record of 49.07.
The trio who claimed the Olympic medals similarly joined the Silesia Diamond League event in Poland, which took place a fortnight following the Paris games. They finished in the previous order, with Adeleke once more earning the fourth spot with a flat 50 seconds.
Adeleke returned to Texas, where she celebrated her 22nd birthday on the 29th of August and continued her training under the guidance of coach Edrick Floréal, before Brussels. She has stated her intention to clock up one more noteworthy run before she wraps up the season.
As she pointed out, being an accomplished 400m competitor relies heavily on experience. Such knowledge includes understanding your running style, knowing your spot, identifying your rivals and several other factors to determine.
As a blossoming athlete, it’s generally understood that one needs to experience competing at their highest level of performance. This is something most successful female athletes have undergone during their formative years. Currently, I am in this phase myself; my second year focusing on 400m training. I need to continue improving my experience for the future.
In the Silesia competition, Adeleke took a significant early lead by covering the first 100m in 11.80 seconds from the seventh lane. However, both Paulino and Naser managed to catch up and overtake her towards the end, with Kaczmarek beating her only just before the finish line.
Paulino has remained undefeated this year in all nine of her 400m sprints, claiming gold in Paris with a 48.17s record. At 27 years old, she managed to break the 48.25s Olympic record that Marie-José Pérec had set in 1996.
Naser claimed the silver title with a 48.53s record, her fastest ever since she returned from a two-year doping ban in 2021. She continues to participate despite the imposition of a 12-month ban by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) on the Bahrain Athletics Association (BAA). This came after they were found guilty of severe anti-doping rule violations and contraventions of World Athletics’ anti-doping rules only eight months before the Paris Olympics.
Unfortunately for Naser, the Diamond League does not count as part of the World Athletics Series events. Despite this, both Adeleke and Naser both have the prowess to compete for a podium place in Brussels, where the champion of each event is rewarded with $30,000. Adeleke has been competing outdoors since she was part of a quartet from the University of Texas that set a new world record for the 4x200m on March 30th.
One less competitor Adeleke will face in Brussels is Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. The reigning 400m hurdles Olympic champion and world record holder from the USA had been hoping to achieve a 200m-400m double this weekend.
McLaughlin-Levrone, having not participated in the Diamond League meetings this year, failed to qualify for a wild card entry. However, she will compete in two individual races with less challenging competitors. Her time in the 400m dash is highly anticipated, after her impressive record of 50.37 seconds in the 400m hurdles at Paris, which earned her the gold. The Brussels meet, which is in its 48th cycle, will see the participation of 82 medalists from Paris. This group includes Letsile Tebogo, a gold medalist in 200m, Jakob Ingebrigtsen who won the gold in 5,000m, and Julien Alfred, Adeleke’s training mate and the 100m champion.