Star-studded hurdles lineup in Rome with Tinch, Roberts, Simonelli and Zhoya

More champions are set to compete at the Golden Gala Pietro Mennea in Rome. With just 20 days to go until the event on Friday, June 6 at the Stadio Olimpico, a star-studded lineup in the 110-meter hurdles has been confirmed.

Competing in Rome will be the current world leader of the season, Cordell Tinch (USA), who starred in the first two legs of the Wanda Diamond League in China, winning in Xiamen with a time of 13.06 and delivering an extraordinary 12.87 in Keqiao—making him the fourth-fastest man in history, just seven hundredths of a second off Aries Merritt’s 2012 world record.

Also in the field is one of the most successful hurdlers of the past two years, Olympic silver and reigning world bronze medallist Daniel Roberts (USA), who set a personal best of 12.96 last season.

Rome is ready to light up for local hero Lorenzo Simonelli (Italy), who claimed the gold medal at the 2024 European Championships at the Stadio Olimpico with a national record of 13.05. This season, he narrowly missed the podium at the World Indoor Championships in Nanjing (finishing fourth), following his silver in the previous edition in Glasgow.

The lineup also includes Frenchman Sasha Zhoya, 2024 Diamond League champion, who recently improved his personal best to 13.06 in Miramar.

With this level of talent, the Golden Gala record in the 110-meter hurdles—13.01, shared by American Allen Johnson (1999) and Jamaican Omar McLeod (2021)—could be broken, and it’s not unrealistic to dream of Rome’s first-ever sub-13 performance.