For most athletes, a first ever appearance on the Wanda Diamond League circuit is a life-changing moment. A giant leap for an aspiring track and field star as they take their first small steps onto the professional circuit in the sport’s most prestigious global series. <\/p>\n
For some, it can be a harbinger of great things to come. Many future world and Olympic champions can trace their rise to greatness back to a memorable Diamond League debut. Two years before he was crowned world champion, US sprinter Noah Lyles stormed to a statement win in the men’s 200m at the Shanghai Diamond League, claiming a debut victory at the age of just 20. A year earlier, Jamaica’s Omar McLeod began the season with a brilliant victory in the 110m hurdles in Doha, before going on to claim gold at Rio 2016 a few months later. <\/p>\n
Victory on debut in the Diamond League is not just a personal milestone, it’s also a statement to the world’s best athletes that you can compete – and win – against the very best of your discipline. <\/p>\n
“I had been at big track meets before, but I’d never won one, and the Diamond League is a big thing: it’s the<\/em> professional circuit,” says US long jumper Steffin McCarter, looking back on his winning debut in Brussels in 2021. <\/p>\n When he arrived in the Belgian capital, McCarter says, he was starstruck by the company he found himself keeping and by the electric atmosphere in a packed King Baudouin Stadium. <\/p>\n “For a split second, I was like: Am I good enough to be here?” he laughs. <\/p>\n He soon proved he was, jumping 7.99 in the Final 3 to beat South African star Ruswahl Samaai and claim his first ever Diamond League victory and a place in the series final a week later. <\/p>\n The incentive of a place in the final, he says, meant that he was able to leave everything out on the track: “It was the last Diamond League in the long jump and I had to win to make the Diamond League Final. They were like: you’ve only got one shot!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Swiss sprinter Ajla Del Ponte and US long jumper Steffin McCarter reflect on the thrill of...","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2847,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"city":[],"class_list":["post-2846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2846"},{"taxonomy":"city","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/city?post=2846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}