Experienced sprinter Akani Simbine and rising middle-distance star Prudence Sekgodiso will hope to close out their top-flight seasons in style when they line up in the Diamond League Final in Brussels this weekend.
The only South African athletes in the entry lists for the two-day event, Simbine and Sekgodiso will both compete on Friday.
Simbine, who won Diamond League races in Suzhou and Oslo this season, will go in the men’s 100m final at 8.17pm.
The national record holder was superb at the recent Olympic Games where he finished fourth in the 100m final and anchored the national 4x100m relay team to the silver medal.
And as one of the fastest men in the field, the 30-year-old South African will turn out among the favourites for the Diamond League title in his specialist event.
Only one of the three athletes who finished ahead of Simbine in the Olympic final – bronze medallist Fred Kerley – will turn out in the 100m race in the Belgian capital.
Kerley, who holds a season’s best of 9.81 seconds, is the only athlete in the line-up who has run faster than Simbine (9.82) this year.
800m race
Sekgodiso, meanwhile, will toe the line in the women’s 800m race at 9.40pm.
While the two-lap contest will be missing Olympic champion Keely Hodgkinson of Great Britain, who has been sidelined by injury, a strong field will compete for the Diamond League crown.
Eight of the nine athletes in the race have run under 1:58.00 this season, and five runners in the line-up have gone faster than Sekgodiso’s personal best of 1:57.26 which she set earlier this year.
The 22-year-old Olympic finalist will fancy her chances, however, after winning Diamond League races in Rabat and Oslo during a breakthrough 2024 campaign.
