Qatar’s high jump superstar Mutaz Essa Barshim (pictured) will be looking to clinch his fourth Diamond Trophy when the reigning Olympic and World champion makes his first appearance this season at the Diamond League 2022 opening meet in Doha on May 13.
“The date is 5/13. God willing, my first competition in the 2022 season - the Diamond League, Doha round. Also the first appearance after the Tokyo Olympics,” Barshim tweeted yesterday, confirming his participation at the event, which will take place at the Suheim bin Hamad Stadium.
It will be the 29-year-old Barshim’s first competition since his gold medal-winning leap at the Tokyo Games on August 1, 2021 as he will be looking to kick start the season with less than 100 days remaining for the World Athletics Championships Oregon22, which will be held in Eugene, USA.
Barshim and Italy’s Gianmarco Tamberi were the last two standing at the Tokyo Games and both were perfect until the bar was set to the Olympic-record height of 2.39m.
Both of them had cleared the 2.37-metre mark in their first attempts but the 2.39-metre mark was too good for them at the Tokyo Olympic Stadium. In an unprecedented gesture, Barshim asked the organisers if they can share the gold medal and they gave the two friends the nod.
It was Qatar’s first track and field gold and Barshim’s third Olympic medal, following silver medals in London 2012 and at Rio Games four years later.
Barshim is the current Asian and Diamond League record holder with a 2.43-metre mark in front of his name.
At the Memorial Van Damme meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on September 5, 2014, Qatar’s most popular sports star was just two centimetres short of the long-standing World Record of Cuba’s Javier Sotomayor.
When Doha hosts the latest edition of the Diamond League, Barshim will lead a star cast which also includes in-form pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis of Sweden, the Olympic champion and the world record holder as well as the Olympic, Asian and Commonwealth Games javelin champion Neeraj Chopra of India.
Doha leg is the first of 14 meetings this season which concluding with a single final across two days in Zurich on September 7-8.
