CHORZOW, POLAND – AUGUST 25: Rhasidat Adeleke of Ireland seen during the start of the Women’s 400m, at the Silesia Kamila Skolimowska Memorial, part of the Wanda Diamond League, on August 25, 2024, at Slaski Stadium in Chorzow.(Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Oslo Diamond League, Live on Virgin Media Two, Thursday, 7-9pm

A double bill of Scandinavian stops on the Diamond League circuit, and a good time for Rhasidat Adeleke to turn up the heat on her summer season. There could be records in the air too.

Starting at the Bislett Games in Oslo on Thursday evening, Adeleke will contest her first two individual 400 metres races of the season, the second one lined up for Stockholm on Sunday.

Adeleke has raced a couple of Diamond League meetings over 200m, only these will be the first true tests in her specialist event.

The Bislett Games, which has been the scene of 71 world records, is also where Mark English will look to continue his record-breaking start to the summer.

At age 32, 10 years older than Adeleke, English is running the best times of his life, improving his Irish 800m record for the second time in 10 days when running 1:43.92 to win at the Hengelo Games in the Netherlands on Monday.

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Adeleke has run two 400m races as part of World Athletics Relays in Guangzhou, China last month, helping ensure both the women’s 4x400m and mixed 4x400m secured qualification for the World Championships in Tokyo in September.

Tokyo has always been her prime individual target this season too.

Given those championships are so late in the season, Adeleke has been timing things a lot differently, although she will want to lay down a marker over the next four days.

“My coach [Edrick Floréal] is very focused on us achieving our targets at the World Championships in September,” Adeleke said.

“By the time it came to September last year, I was so burnt out physically and mentally.

We had just been go, go, go, go, go. The base that I had was wearing away.

“So what my coach decided to do was more so keep the base going, keep doing that groundwork and then we’ll sharpen up close to the championships.

It’s very different to how I used to be at this time of year …

It could be a risk, but you have to take risks sometimes to achieve your goals.”

The Oslo 400m line-up features five of the eight Olympic finalists from Paris last summer, including Poland’s Natalia Bukowiecka, née Kaczmarek, who married Polish shot putter Konrad Bukowiecki last September.

The 27-year-old Bukowiecka won the bronze medal in Paris in 48.98 seconds, .20 ahead of Adeleke in fourth; she also beat Adeleke to the gold medal at the European Championships in Rome, now just over a year ago, also clocking 48.98, with Adeleke running her Irish record of 49.07 to win silver.

Adeleke knows her 49.07 will likely need some revision if she is to make the podium in Tokyo.

Seven women have already broken 50 seconds this summer, Paris Olympic silver medallist Salwa Eid Naser from Bahrain topping the list with her 48.67, ahead of the 49.12 clocked by Olympic champion Marileidy Paulino from the Dominican Republic.

Also lining up in Oslo is Britain’s Amber Anning, fifth in Paris, plus Sada Williams from Barbados and Henriette Jaeger from Norway, who finished seventh and eighth.

For English, whose 1:43.92 in Hengelo improved his previous record of 1:44.34 set in Bydgoszcz, Poland on May 30th, the Oslo 800m line-up includes three of the six fastest runners in history; Kenya’s Olympic champion Emmanuel Wanyonyi, Algeria’s Djamel Sedjati and Gabriel Tual of France, who have all dipped under 1:42.

Winning in Oslo would certainly be a tall order, but English will definitely be watching the clock.

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