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Athletics: Poland to host Diamond League meet after Paris Olympics

17.08.2023 11:30
Poland will host a prestigious Diamond League track-and-field event next August, shortly after the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, organisers have announced.
Polands Natalia Kaczmarek wins the womens 400m event at the 2023 Diamond League meeting in the southern Polish city of Chorzów in July.
Poland's Natalia Kaczmarek wins the women's 400m event at the 2023 Diamond League meeting in the southern Polish city of Chorzów in July.PAP/Zbigniew Meissner

Next year’s Kamila Skolimowska Memorial Meet in southern Poland will double as a Diamond League meeting. It will be held on August 25, 2024, shortly after the Paris Olympics, according to an announcement.

This year’s elite track-and-field Diamond League event hosted by Poland took place in July, attracting an audience of 25,000 to the Silesian Stadium in the southern city of Chorzów, Polish state news agency PAP reported.    

The World Athletics federation has described the 2023 Kamila Skolimowska Memorial Meet in Chorzów as the best “non-final” Diamond League meeting in five years.

The Diamond League is a prestigious annual series of 14 one-day meeting competitions, according to World Athletics.

Looking ahead to the 2024 Kamila Skolimowska Memorial Meet, the Polish event’s sporting director, Piotr Małachowski, told reporters: “Our aim has been to hold the competition towards the end of the season, after the main athletics event of the year. This will be the case in 2024.”

He added that organisers would seek to "invite as many gold medalists from the Paris Olympics as possible" to Chorzów next August. 

“Hopefully, they will include many athletes in red-and-white,” Małachowski said, referring to Poland’s national colours. 

Meanwhile, the Kamila Skolimowska Memorial Meet’s communications director, Marek Plawgo, said that next year’s event would feature Poland’s top track-and-field athletes as well as international stars.

He added that the competition’s growing profile meant that “foreign athletes often ask about the possibility of taking part” in the Chorzów meeting, the PAP news agency reported.

(pm/gs)

Source: PAP, polskieradio24.pl