Strand wins Silesia 1500m in 3:30.77 as MJW takes 100m race

Ethan Strand won the men’s 1500m in 3:30.77 at the Silesia Diamond League meeting, finishing ahead of Phanuel Koech, Cole Hocker and Jakob Ingebrigtsen. Melissa Jefferson-Wooden also took the women’s 100m in 10.78 seconds with a 0.7 metres-per-second wind.

Strand was 11th at the 800m mark but moved through the field with a decisive final lap. Koech finished second in 3:31.14, while Olympic champion Hocker took third in 3:31.16. Ingebrigtsen, who had led at the bell and into the final straight, placed fourth in 3:31.19.

The victory was Strand’s first Diamond League title. It also spoiled Ingebrigtsen’s return to Diamond League 1500m competition, his first appearance in the distance since Tokyo last September. Hocker was separated from Koech by only two hundredths of a second, with Ingebrigtsen another three hundredths behind.

Jefferson-Wooden maintained her two-year unbeaten record in the 100m. Her only loss over the distance during that period came when she won Olympic bronze in Paris. The American’s Silesia victory came in a race described as one of the meeting’s strongest sprint fields, although the supplied results do not list the other finishers.

The Kamila Skolimowska Memorial in Chorzów also produced several major performances. Mykolas Alekna set a Diamond League discus record of 72.58m, while Collen Kebinatshipi ran a world-leading 43.59 in the men’s 400m. Alison dos Santos defeated Karsten Warholm for the third time this season in the 400m hurdles, winning in a world-leading 46.43.

There were further wins for African athletes. Ethiopia’s Gemechu Godana beat Soufiane El Bakkali in the 3000m steeplechase with a meeting record of 8:02.74, and Senegal’s Saly Sarr won the triple jump with a national record of 15.08m. Overall, the meeting featured seven records and two world-leading marks.