Track fans have been spoiled this week. Just six days after an incredible Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, the Diamond League heads to Monaco on Friday for the Herculis meeting, always one of the highlights of the summer. While there is no men’s 1500 this year, the meet is still packed with big names, led by the 200-meter showdown between Olympic champions Noah Lyles and Letsile Tebogo (separate article here).

From a mid-d/distance standpoint, the highlight is the men’s 800, which features the entire 2024 Olympic podium — Emmanuel Wanyonyi, Marco Arop, Djamel Sedjati — plus Americans Josh Hoey and Bryce Hoppel, winners of the last two World Indoor titles. Plus there’s a battle of Olympic gold and silver medalists Soufiane El Bakkali and Kenneth Rooks in the men’s steeplechase, and there should be a fast 5,000 led by Ethiopia’s teenage sensation Biniam Mehary and Sweden’s European record holder Andreas Almgren.

Seventeen-year-old Australian star Gout Gout will also make his first appearance at a Diamond League event, though he will race in a special U23 section of the 200m (before the broadcast window) rather than the DL 200 with Lyles and Tebogo.

Meet details below, followed by a look at the biggest races in Monaco.

Meet details
What: 2025 Herculis
When: Friday, July 11 (2-4 p.m. ET, 8-10 pm CEST)
Where: Stade Louis II, Fontvieille, Monaco
*Start lists/schedule/results *TV/streaming information

After the meet is over, we’ll break it down for you live right here on LetsRun.com. To get the analysis on demand as a podcast, join our Supporters Club.

Men’s 800: An Olympic final-quality field could produce something very special

Just how good is the men’s 800 in Monaco? Maybe the following table will help put it in context:

The 7 Fastest 800m Men in History
Athlete	Nationality	Personal best	Racing in Monaco?
David Rudisha	Kenya	1:40.91	No
Wilson Kipketer	Denmark	1:41.11	No
Emmanuel Wanyonyi	Kenya	1:41.11	Yes
Marco Arop	Canada	1:41.20	Yes
Djamel Sedjati	Algeria	1:41.46	Yes
Gabriel Tual	France	1:41.61	Yes
Bryce Hoppel	USA	1:41.67	Yes

Yes, that’s right. Of the seven fastest 800-meter runners of all time, five of them will be on the start line on Friday. Add in World Indoor champion Josh Hoey of the US (1:42.43 pb), Botswana’s Tshepiso Masalela (1:42.70, DL wins in Doha and Rabat), and Spain’s Mohamed Attaoui (1:42.04 pb, DL win in Paris) and you’ve got an absolutely loaded field. Peter Bol has run an Australian record this year of 1:43.79 — and that makes him the slowest man in the 11-person field.

This is an Olympic final-caliber field — literally. It features all eight Olympic finalists from Paris, plus Bol, Hoey, and Algeria’s Slime Moula (1:42.77 pb). The quality and depth is off the charts.

We’ll also get our first Diamond League showdown of 2025 between the two men who have owned the event over the past two years, Olympic champion Emmanuel Wanyonyi and world champion Marco Arop. The two have already raced each other this year back on April 6 at the Grand Slam Track Kingston meet, with Arop winning. But there were so many qualifiers on that race that it is hard to draw much meaning — it was extremely early in the season…in super windy conditions…a day after they had raced a 1500.

In Monaco, both men should be fresh and ready to run fast. Arop hasn’t raced any Diamond Leagues yet, but he went undefeated in GST 800s, getting faster each time out: 1:45.13 in Kingston, 1:43.69 in Miramar, 1:43.38 in Philadelphia (which is more impressive when you consider he spanked runner-up Hoey by more than a second, and Hoey ran 1:42.43 in Stockholm two weeks later). Wanyonyi followed up his defeat to Arop with another loss in Rabat, but since then has racked up wins in Oslo and Stockholm. Like Arop, he has gotten faster with every race:

The world record — David Rudisha‘s 1:40.91, which has stood since 2012 — is very much on the table. Over the last 13 months, Wanyonyi, Arop, and Olympic bronze medalist Djamel Sedjati have combined to run 1:41 11 times, including a 1:41.11 and a 1:41.19 by Wanyonyi and a 1:41.20 by Arop. And Wanyonyi is still just 20 years old. In all likelihood, Rudisha’s WR is going down sometime in the next year, and Monaco is as good a place to do it as any. The pace will be hot, with the rabbit targeting 49.0 through 400m.

For Americans Hoppel and Hoey, Friday’s race is another chance to test themselves against the best the world has to offer. But if either is to make it onto the podium in Tokyo this year, they may have to run faster than any American ever has — and, as Hoppel learned last year in Paris, even that might not be enough. Both Americans enter the race in good form, but the men’s 800 is at such a high level right now that they will have to be at their very best in order to be competitive.

Who wins the men’s 800 in Monaco?

Men’s 3,000 steeplechase: El Bakkali vs. Rooks in Olympic rematch

I’m still getting used to the concept of Kenneth Rooks, Olympic silver medalist. These are his results in flat races so far in 2025:

Date	Location	Distance	Result
January 18	Seattle	Mile	6th, 3:58.09
February 1	Boston	5000m	19th, 13:30.84
February 22	New York (USA Indoors)	3000m	14th, 7:56.68
May 10	Portland	1500m	3rd, 3:37.66
June 15	Portland	5000m	12th, 13:26.65
July 4	Tomblaine	1500m	13th, 3:41.12

For a professional runner, that is decidedly slow — there are about 40-50 guys in the NCAA who could do that right now. And yet, Rooks has run 8:14 in the steeple this year — not many guys in the NCAA can do that — and I expect him to go faster on Friday. Put a few barriers on the track, and the mild-mannered Rooks turns into an animal.

It might be a stretch for Rooks to challenge his 8:06 pb from last year’s Olympic final, but his coach Ed Eyestone believes both Rooks and his training partner, NCAA champion James Corrigan, who is also running Monaco, are in great shape right now.

“Kenny is in every bit as good of shape as when he went to the Trials [last year],” Eyestone told LetsRun.com last week. “Is he as sharp as he was at the Olympics? No, because we want to be there when it counts at World Championships. And certainly, we can’t take the USA Championships for granted with the number of guys who now have the qualifier. But I do think he is in close to that [Olympic] kind of fitness. And in the right race and paced from the start, I think he could run sub-8:10. And James is right there as well.”

The third American Olympian from 2024, Matthew Wilkinson, has also been in good form this year, running a pb of 8:11 in Rabat, so we’ll get to see a mini-preview of USAs in Monaco.

Up front, double Olympic champ Soufiane El Bakkali, the 2025 world leader at 8:00, will start as favorite, though he was beaten earlier this year by Samuel Firewu in Xiamen. Firewu is also running Monaco, as is Germany’s Frederik Ruppert, who broke through with a massive 14-second pb of 8:01 in Rabat and will be chasing the first ever sub-8:00 by a non-African man.

The last time we saw Andreas Almgren, the 30-year-old Swede set a European record of 12:44 to earn a dominant win in Stockholm on June 15. Almgren won that race by 13 seconds, grinding out the final two kilometers on his own in 5:01. Clearly, the dude is crazy fit, but Friday’s race presents a different challenge. As impressive as 12:44 is, it may not be enough to drop the likes of Ethiopians Yomif Kejelcha (12:38 pb), Hagos Gebrhiwet (12:36 pb), Telahun Bekele (12:42 pb), and Biniam Mehary (12:45 pb, coming off a 10,000m win at Pre on Saturday), all of whom are lining up in Monaco.

Instead, this race may test Almgren’s finishing gear, though the race may end up being very fast once again. With little clarity on their country’s selection process for Worlds, the Ethiopians will likely want to post some fast times to boost their chances of selection. There may be a bit of prisoner’s dilemma at play because no one will want to kill themselves setting a fast pace just to allow the others to blow past them at the end. Usually in these situations, Kejelcha ends up taking the pace anyway. Let’s see how it all unfolds on Friday.

For more on Almgren, check out his interview from June when he was a guest on the LetsRun.com Track Talk Podcast.

Usually, if there’s a 1000-meter race on the schedule these days, it means Faith Kipyegon is taking a crack at the 2:28.98 world record, but Kipyegon has earned a rest after her 1500 WR in Eugene last week. Instead, Australia’s Jessica Hull, who just ran 3:52 in the 1500 at Pre, is the headliner, and she faces some strong competition in the form of rising star Nelly Chepchirchir. The 22-year-old Kenyan hasn’t faced the likes of Kipyegon, Hull, or Diribe Welteji this year, but she has beaten everyone in front of her so far, with DL 1500 wins in Doha, Rabat, and Paris.

In the right race, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Chepchirchir take a chunk off her 3:57 pb from Paris, and her 1:57.00 800 pb from last year makes her a good fit for the 1000. This should be a good race between her and Hull. Reigning 800 world champion Mary Moraa is also entered, but she has not been in great form (she failed to break 2:00 in the 800 at Pre) and the extra 200 meters does not help her.

Brit Jemma Reekie and American Addy Wiley can run both the 800 and 1500, so this race suits their skillset even if they lack the ceiling of Hull/Chepchirchir. Switzerland’s Audrey Werro, who has run 1:57.25 this year, also enters in good form.

Editor’s note from Rojo: Is a world record from Hull inconceivable?

Men’s 110 hurdles: USAs (and Worlds?) preview

The four fastest hurdlers of 2025 are all American, and they’re all racing in Monaco: Cordell Tinch (12.87), Trey Cunningham (13.00), Dylan Beard (13.02), and 19-year-old Ja’Kobe Tharp (13.05) of Auburn, who will be making his Diamond League debut. Any of those men would be the fastest guy in any other country on Earth, but at least one of them is guaranteed to miss Worlds this year even though the US will get four spots at Worlds as reigning world and Olympic champion Grant Holloway has a bye.

With USAs just three weeks away, consider Monaco a preview of the fastest national championship race on the planet.

Best of the rest

A few highlights from the sprint action in Monaco:

• Women’s 400 hurdles: Femke Bol has never lost a Diamond League 400 hurdles race — her record is 26-0 — and with no Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone in the field, she is the heavy favorite here. Instead, Bol will look for some revenge against American Anna Cockrell, who beat Bol out for silver at the Olympics last year.

Women’s 100: Julien Alfred ran one of her best races ever at last week’s Pre Classic, 10.77 into a 1.5 m/s headwind, and it still wasn’t good enough for the win against Melissa Jefferson-Wooden. With no MJW in this race, Alfred will be the heavy favorite in a field that also features Jamaican champ Tina Clayton and American Jacious Sears, who ran an impressive 10.85 (+1.7) to win the B heat at Pre.