SILESIA: Kishane Thompson laid down a marker ahead of next month’s world championships when the Jamaican came out on top in the highly-anticipated 100 metres against Olympic champion Noah Lyles at the Silesia Diamond League meeting on Saturday.
A host of world and Olympic champions headlined by the likes of Keely Hodgkinson, Karsten Warholm, Armand ‘Mondo’ Duplantis, Faith Kipyegon and Femke Bol shone in hot and humid conditions in front of more than 40,000 fans in the Polish city.
The men’s sprint brought together American Lyles and Thompson for the first time since their unforgettable Olympic final last year in Paris, where Lyles beat his rival by five thousandths of a second.
Add Kenny Bednarek into the mix, who recently clashed with Lyles, and this was a race that nobody wanted to miss. The two Americans had a heated moment at the US Championships earlier this month, when Lyles stared down Bednarek coming to the line and received a shove in return at the finish.
Thompson blasted out of the blocks and never looked like being beaten, while Lyles, with his typically slow start, came strong at the end but the Jamaican won in 9.87 seconds, with Lyles clocking 9.90, his season’s best, and Bednarek finishing third.
Hodgkinson made an impressive comeback over 800m a year since winning gold at the Paris Games as the 23-year-old Briton showed no sign of the lingering hamstring problems that had sidelined her for months as she clocked 1min 54.74sec, the fastest in the world this year.
Kenya’s serial world record breaker Kipyegon missed out on the long-standing world record in the women’s 3,000m.
Six weeks after improving her own world 1,500m record in Eugene, Kipyegon clocked 8:07.04 over the non-Olympic distance, falling just short of the 8:06.11 world record set by China’s Wang Junxia in 1993.
Warholm looked in astonishing form in the 400m hurdles after a two-month training block at home in Norway, timing a world-leading time of 46.28sec.
It was the third fastest time ever run over the distance, topped only by the Norwegian’s own world record of 46.28sec and American Rai Benjamin’s 46.19sec.
Dutch star Bol comfortably extended her six-race win streak in the women’s 400m hurdles this year with victory in 51.91sec — another world-leading time.
Duplantis, fresh from setting his 13th pole vault world record with 6.29m in Budapest on Tuesday, failed to hit those heights but secured victory in 6.10m, having failed three attempts at 6.20.
World leader Melissa Jefferson-Wooden equalled Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce’s meet record when she clocked 10.66sec for an impressive victory in the women’s 100m.
World champion Sha’Carri Richardson could only finish sixth after a troubled few weeks following her arrest for a violent altercation with her partner.
Jamaica’s two-time world champion Shericka Jackson claimed the honours in the 200m in 22.17sec as she powers back to form.
Cordell Tinch left it late, but the in-form American powered past three-time world champion Grant Holloway for a third victory this season in the 110m hurdles in 13.03sec.
Olympic champion Masai Russell came out on top of a stacked field in the 100m hurdles in a Diamond League record of 12.19sec ahead of American team-mate Tonea Marshall.
Marileidy Paulino of the Dominican Republic edged Bahrain’s Salwa Eid Naser for victory in 49.18sec in the women’s 400m and Ethiopia’s Gudaf Tsegay outpaced Kenya’s Beatrice Chebet for the win in the women’s 1500m in 3:50.62.
Published in Dawn, August 17th, 2025
