Rabat 2025: Five things to look out for

Image: Marta Gorczynska, courtesy of Wanda Diamond League

After a year out in Marrakech in 2024, the Meeting International Mohammed VI returns to Rabat this Sunday for the fourth leg of the 2025 Wanda Diamond League. Here are five things to look out for in the Moroccan capital.

Bol launches campaign

The on-track action will begin with a bang on Sunday evening as 400m hurdles Olympic champion Femke Bol looks to get her 2025 campaign off to a winning start in the first race of the night. Bol has seen it all in the Diamond League in recent years, dominating her discipline with 25 wins and four series titles. Rabat will be a rare new experience, as the Dutchwoman makes her debut at the Meeting International Mohammed VI. Yet even in new surroundings, anything other than a victory would be a huge shock: five years on from her breakthrough season in 2020, Bol is still yet to lose at a Diamond League meeting.

Tebogo doubles up

Botswanan sprint star Letsile Tebogo made history in 2024 when he became the first African to win an Olympic gold medal in the men’s 200m, setting a new continental record of 19.47 in the process. On Sunday, Tebogo lines up at the African leg of the Diamond League hoping once again to do something remarkable. Both the Botswanan and his US rival Fred Kerley are scheduled to run in both the men’s 100m and the men’s 200m, making them two of only a few athletes in the series’ history who have attempted to double up at a one-day meeting.

El Bakkali on home soil

If there is one athlete whose name is synonymous with the Moroccan Diamond League meeting, it is Soufiane El Bakkali. A two-time Olympic champion in the 3000m steeplechase, El Bakkali is a national treasure in his home country and the Meeting International Mohammed VI is traditionally a chance for his adoring fans to see their hero up close. He has won at every single edition of the meeting since 2019 and lost their only once, in 2018. This year will be no walk in the park, however, as El Bakkali goes up against the likes of Ethiopia’s Samuel Firewu, who beat him in Xiamen last month, and Kenya’s reigning Wanda Diamond League champion Edmund Serem.

Chebet in form

El Bakkali isn’t the only long-distance superstar in action on Sunday. The women’s 3000m also has a world-class line-up which includes three of the current top five in the world in Beatrice Chebet, Ejgayehu Taye and Nadia Batocletti. Kenyan star Chebet will be firm favourite after her breathtaking year in 2024. As well as claiming Olympic gold in both the 5000m and 10,000m, Chebet also snatched her second Diamond League title in the 5000m and broke the 10,000m world record at the Wanda Diamond League meeting in Eugene. She has continued that vein of form this season, opening her 2025 campaign with a meeting record and world lead of 14:27.12 in Xiamen.

Kerr v McEwen

Hamish Kerr and Shelby McEwen’s epic battle for the gold medal was one of the highlights of the Olympic Games in Paris last year and the rivalry has continued to bubble away in the Diamond League this season. New Zealand star Kerr ultimately beat McEwen in the jump-off in Paris, but McEwen got his revenge when the two men met for the first time since the Olympics at the Diamond League in Doha last weekend. Kerr will be hoping to bounce back in Rabat in a head-to-head which is fast becoming one of the sport’s great rivalries.

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