NEW DELHI: The sixth leg of the 2023 Wanda Diamond League will be held at the Athletissima in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Friday. Olympic and reigning Diamond League champion Neeraj Chopra who has a personal best of 89.94 metres will look to continue his impressive run after finishing first in the men's Javelin at the Doha meeting.
Chopra will be joined by fellow Indian long jumper Murali Sreeshankar (PB: 8.41m). His previous appearance in the series came in Paris, where he finished third with an 8.09m jump. Earlier this year, Sreeshankar had also jumped 8.41m at the National Inter-State Athletics Championships to qualify for the World Championships. This was the second-best jump of the season globally, only after compatriot Jeswin Aldrin's 8.42m.
Sreeshankar will go up against Olympic champion Miltiadis Tentoglou (PB: 8.60m) and Simon Ehammer (PB: 8.45m). The long-jump entry list includes 2019 World Champion Tajay Gayle (PB: 8.69m) and Yuki Hashioka (PB: 8.36m).
The action will be live on JioCinema and Sports18.
Chopra is coming into the event as the leader in the Javelin standings, scoring eight points and beating out the field with his impressive 88.67m throw in Doha, a distance he will look to better in Lausanne. Chopra's competition includes Anderson Peters from Grenada, (PB: 93.07m), Tokyo Olympics silver medalist Jakub Vadlejch from the Czech Republic (PB: 90.88m), Johannes Vetter from Germany (PB: 97.76m), and former Olympic medalist Keshorn Walcott from Trinidad and Tobago (PB: 90.16m).
Neeraj is making a comeback after suffering a muscle strain he suffered during training last month due to which he withdrew from the FBK Games in the Netherlands on June 4 and the Paavo Nurmi Games in Finland on June 13. Additionally, the 25-year-old skipped the just-finished Bhubaneswar National Inter-State Senior Athletics Championships.
Neeraj was also not named in the 54-member Indian team announced for the Asian Athletics Championships 2023. (ANI)