The 2026 Golden Gala Pietro Mennea in Rome is shaping up to be one of the strongest Diamond League meetings of the season, with Olympic champions, world champions and some of the fastest athletes on the planet set to compete at the Stadio Olimpico on June 4.

Organisers have confirmed that the meet will feature 43 Olympic and World champions along with more than 80 global medallists, underlining the scale of the field assembled for the fifth stop of the 2026 Wanda Diamond League season.

One of the biggest attractions will undoubtedly be the men’s 100m.

Olympic champion Noah Lyles is set to headline a blockbuster sprint showdown in Rome. The American superstar, who has become one of the faces of global athletics, had earlier described Rome as the site of “one of my favourite races ever.”

Italian fans will also closely follow hometown hero Marcell Jacobs, with organisers already billing the sprint race as one of the highlights of the evening.

The men’s sprint field is expected to include elite names such as Letsile Tebogo, Kishane Thompson and Fred Kerley, creating one of the deepest sprint races seen this season.

The meeting programme itself is stacked with quality across disciplines.

The men’s Diamond League events will include:

• 100m
• 110m hurdles
• high jump
• long jump
• triple jump
• shot put
• javelin throw

while the women’s programme features:

• 200m
• 400m
• 1500m
• 5000m
• 100m hurdles
• 400m hurdles
• pole vault.

Among the major field event attractions is Italy’s triple jump star Andy Diaz, who arrives as one of the reigning Diamond League champions and one of the biggest names in European athletics.

The Golden Gala has historically been one of the most prestigious one-day athletics meetings in the world and remains Italy’s premier athletics event. Named after Italian sprint legend Pietro Mennea, the meet has regularly produced world-leading performances and iconic clashes over the decades.

This year’s edition also carries added significance because the 2026 season does not feature either the Olympics or World Championships. As a result, Diamond League points and high-quality competition become even more important for athletes building toward the Diamond League Final in Brussels later this year.

For Indian athletics fans, the Rome meeting offers another glimpse into the level currently required at the very top of global track and field.

With athletes such as Lyles, Tebogo and Jacobs sharing the same track, and world-class competition spread across nearly every discipline, Rome is expected to deliver one of the fastest and most competitive nights of athletics in 2026.

The Sanlam Cape Town Marathon may still be chasing official World Marathon Major status, but the 2026 edition delivered exactly the kind of spectacle global road running wanted to see.

Ethiopia’s Mohamed Esa and Dera Dida produced commanding victories in the elite races, while marathon legend Eliud Kipchoge officially began his ambitious “World Tour” project on African soil for the very first time.

The men’s race belonged to Esa.

The Ethiopian clocked a stunning 2:04:55 to smash the course record and register an African all-comers’ record in Cape Town. It was also the first marathon victory of his career after several near-misses on the global circuit, including runner-up finishes in Tokyo, Boston and Chicago in previous years.

Esa made his decisive move around the 40km mark after a tightly packed lead group had gone through halfway in 1:02:49. He eventually held off compatriot Yihunilign Adane by four seconds in a dramatic finish, while Kenya’s Kalipus Lomwai finished third.

In the women’s race, Ethiopia completed a clean sweep of the podium.

Berlin Marathon runner-up Dera Dida timed her race perfectly, pulling away in the closing stages to win in 2:23:18 ahead of Mestawut Fikir and Waganesh Mekasha Amare. The lead group had remained largely intact until 35km before Dida finally broke clear over the final kilometres.

But beyond the results, much of the attention centred on Kipchoge.

The two-time Olympic champion and former world record holder finished in 2:13:29 as part of a new personal mission — running marathons across all seven continents over the next few years. Cape Town marked the first African stop of that journey and, remarkably, the first competitive marathon Kipchoge has ever run on African soil.

“Africa is where my journey as a runner began,” Kipchoge had said before the race, calling the moment deeply symbolic.

At 41, Kipchoge is no longer chasing world records in the same way he once did. The marathon landscape itself has changed dramatically in recent months, with men’s marathon running entering an astonishing new era after multiple sub-two-hour performances at the London Marathon earlier this year.

Yet Kipchoge’s presence still gives races enormous global visibility.

That matters greatly for Cape Town.

The marathon is currently bidding to become the first African race inducted into the prestigious Abbott World Marathon Majors series — joining events like London, Boston, Berlin and Tokyo. Last year’s edition had been cancelled shortly before the start due to dangerous weather conditions, delaying Cape Town’s evaluation process.

This year’s successful staging, massive participation numbers and elite performances were therefore hugely important for organisers trying to prove Africa can host a marathon at the very highest level.

And if the atmosphere, crowds and quality of racing from this edition are anything to go by, Cape Town’s case is becoming increasingly difficult for the marathon world to ignore.