ENTRY LISTS GOLDEN GALA PIETRO MENNEA (As at 26 May 2023)
Another Olympic champion to enhance the already extraordinary cast of the Golden Gala Pietro Mennea, when there is only one week left to the meeting on Friday 2 June in Florence. In the Italian leg of the Wanda Diamond League, the Ethiopian Selemon Barega will compete in the 5000 metres: he is the gold medalist at the Tokyo Olympic Games over 10,000m and reigning world champion of 3,000 metres indoor, title won in Belgrade last year. At just 23 years, the African athlete boasts an excellent curriculum with also the silver medals won at the Doha World Athletics Championships in 2019 over 5000 metres and previously in the 3000 metres at the 2018 World Indoor Championships in Birmingham. It will be his third participation at the Golden Gala after finishing in second place at the Olimpico in Rome in 2019 and then fourth in the last edition of 2022 over the 5000 metres, a distance in which he has a personal best of 12:43.02 (fifth ever in the world) set in 2018 in Brussels which is still the world U20 record. The race promises to be sensational with the Olympic champion and world record holder Joshua Cheptegei (Uganda), the Olympic silver medallist Mohammed Ahmed (Canada) and the world silver medallist Jacob Krop (Kenya), instead the bronze Oscar Chelimo (Uganda) withdraws.
An outstanding athlete is also added in the women's long jump competition, Tara Davis, who has already landed above seven metres on several occasions this year, jumping a regular 7.07 (+1.9) on May 5 in Fayetteville but also a wind-assisted 7.11 (+2.1), on May 21 in Devonshire, on the island of Bermuda. The 24-year-old American jumped 7.14 in the 2021 season that saw her in sixth place in the Tokyo Olympic Games final and is married to Paralympic athlete Hunter Woodhall. In an evening of unforgettable emotions at the Ridolfi stadium, everything is ready for a real preview of the next World Athletics Championships in August in Budapest with the German Olympic and world champion Malaika Mihambo, the Nigerian world silver medallist Ese Brume, the Serbian world indoor and European outdoor champion Ivana Vuleta, the British European indoor champion Jazmin Sawyers and the home idol Larissa Iapichino, silver at the European indoors, who just achieved her outdoor personal best with 6.83 against the wind (-1.8) on Wednesday in Kallithea, in Greece.
Among the new names in the entry list, a world champion in the 200 metres: the Dominican Alexander Ogando, gold medal with the 4x400 medley relay at the Worlds last summer in Eugene, Oregon. In the usual turnover that characterizes the entries before each event, it must be reported that Kenny Bednarek (USA) in the 200m, Leticia Oro Melo of Brazil in the long jump and the Ugandan Peruth Chemutai in the 3000 steeplechase have pulled out.
