Reigning 1500m Wanda Diamond League champion Faith Kipyegon will headline the opening leg of Doha Diamond League meeting in Doha, Qatar on May 5.

Since 2015, Kipyegon has either won or finished second in every major championship, and is widely regarded as the greatest female middle-distance runner in history. 

Yesterday, the organizers announced that the 2023 Diamond League will be held in 15 cities across four different continents and 12 countries. The two-time Olympic and world champion ran the second-fastest 1500m time ever in Monaco last summer recording 3:50.37.

Arguably the greatest female 1500m runner of all-time, she now holds seven of the 20 fastest times in history and is the athlete with the most sub-four minute performances.

Her 1500m Diamond League title last year was the third of her career, with her tally of wins on athletics’ premier one-day circuit now at 18.

In 2021, Kipyegon retained her Olympic title in Tokyo and in July 2022 she regained the global title that she had first won in 2017 in Eugene, London, with a commanding victory.

“I’m delighted to come back again to the Doha Diamond League,” said the 2022 Wanda Diamond League champion. 

“After a winter of focusing on endurance and strength, it’s a great chance for me to start real racing in Doha and to see where I am at in my build up towards the World Champs later on in the year.” 

Kipyegon won the second world title of her career in Eugene and came very close to Genzebe Dibaba’s world record setting the second fastest time in history in the 1500m by clocking 3:50.37 in the Monaco Diamond League last year. 

The Patrick Sang-coached athlete, who trains alongside marathon world record holder Eliud Kipchoge, has gone from strength to strength. She returned to action in 2019, after giving birth in 2018, and finished second at the World Athletics Championships in Doha, breaking the Kenyan record of 3:54.22. Chepngetich is only the second woman in history to win back-to-back Olympic gold medals in the women’s 1,500m, having triumphed in Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020. 

The only other athlete to accomplish the feat is Tatyana Kazankina of the Soviet Union at the 1976 and 1980 Olympics.

Athletes will compete in the 14 series meetings from May to September, with the most successful qualifying for the two-day (September 16 and 17) Wanda Diamond League Final at the Classic in Eugene, Oregon.

The season opens in Doha on May 5, before touching down on African soil at the Meeting International Mohammed VI in Rabat on May 28.

 The series will then head to Europe in June and July. The world’s best athletes will head to Rome on June 2nd, Paris on June 9th, Oslo on June 15th, Lausanne on June 30th and Stockholm on July 2.