Two olympic and world champions are set to highlight the Golden Gala Pietro Mennea on Thursday 9 June at the Rome Olympic Stadium. The first top athletes taking part to the 42nd edition of the Golden Gala, the fifth leg of the 2022 Wanda Diamond League, have been unveiled. German star Malaika Mihambo can take off on the long jump runway. Swede Daniel Stahl will be in the spotlight in the men’s discus throw.
Mihambo dominated the women’s long jump in the top international events in the past seasons, completing the hat-trick with the Olympic gold medal in Tokyo following the European gold medal in Berlin 2018 and the world outdoor title in Doha 2019, when she set her PB with 7.30m. The German returns to the Golden Gala after her second place in Florence last year and her win three years ago in the Rome Olympic Stadium with 7.07m, one of the best jumps of her career. Mihambo will take on Ivana Vuleta, who recently claimed her second world indoor gold medal on home soil in Belgrade repeating the title she had already won in Birmingham four years ago. Mihambo will go up against world indoor triple jump silver medallist Maryna Bekh-Romanchuk, who also won the world silver medal in the long jump in Doha, Swede Khaddi Sagnia, Jazmin Sawyers from Great Britain, Chantel Malone from British Virgin Islands. The crowd in the Olympic Stadium will cheer for Italian long jump star Larissa Iapichino, rising star of Italian athletics and world under 20 record holder with her 6.91m mark set last year.
The men’s discus throw is shaping up as a star-studded competition. The Golden Gala Pietro Mennea will feature a re-match of the Olympic final in Tokyo, with the three medallists in the line-up: olympic champion Daniel Stahl (Sweden) silver medallist Simon Pettersson (Sweden), bronze medallist Lukas Weisshaidinger (Austria). Stahl triumphed at the 2019 World Championships in Doha in the season, when he improved his PB to 71.86m and repeated this achievement by winning the Olympic gold medal last summer. Stahl will take on world silver medallist Fedrick Dacres from Jamaica (70.78m), London 2017 world champion and Berlin 2018 European champion Andrius Gudzius from Lithuania and Slovenian rising star Kristian Ceh, who set his PB of 70.35m and finished fifth at the Olympic Games in Tokyo. Italian discus thrower Giovanni Faloci will also line up.
