Two Olympic champions - India’s javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra and Canada’s 200 metres runner Andre De Grasse, plus Britain's former world 200m gold medallist Dina Asher-Smith have pulled out of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.

Doubt has been cast over Dina Asher-Smith's participation at the upcoming Commonwealth Games here after suffering an injury scare at the World Athletics Championships in Eugene in the United States.

Local hero Mondo Duplantis produced the most popular result at Stockholm’s Wanda Diamond League meeting as he cleared 6.16 metres, the best outdoor pole vault ever - but the most astonishing performance was a landmark victory by former Athlete Refugee Team (ART) runner Dominic Lobalu. 

Can Marcell Jacobs, Italy's surprise Olympic 100 metres winner, beat the in-form American sprinters on their home track in Eugene next month to earn a second global gold after an outdoor season undermined by injury?

Sprinter Dina Asher-Smith and heptathlete Katarina Johnson-Thompson headline England's 72-strong athletics squad for this year’s Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.

It is a measure of Eugene’s Prefontaine Classic meeting - which tomorrow forms the third stop on the Wanda Diamond League tour - that it can lose four Olympic gold medallists at late notice and still remain packed with compelling competition and world record attempts.

Huge victories in the field for Germany’s Malaika Mihambo and Kristjan Ceh of Slovenia, and impressive wins on the track from home athletes Dina Asher-Smith, Keely Hodgkinson and Laura Muir were highlights of a blustery afternoon’s athletics at Birmingham’s re-built Alexander Stadium today.

Birmingham’s re-built Alexander Stadium stands ready to usher in a new era of big-time athletics tomorrow when it hosts the second Diamond League meeting of the season, before hosting track and field at the Commonwealth Games later this year.

Mondo Duplantis and Sifan Hassan, of whom world records are nowadays expected almost as a default, will be in the field at Brussels tomorrow night in the last Wanda Diamond League meeting of the season before the Final in Zurich from September 8 to 9 – and either of them could indeed deliver.

Sifan Hassan is aiming to break the women’s 5,000 metres world record on the first of two days of stellar athletics in Eugene in Oregon in the United States that will conclude with the first Wanda Diamond League meeting since the Tokyo 2020 Games ended.

Norway’s 20-year-old Jakob Ingebrigtsen earned a landmark 5,000 metres victory at the Diamond League meeting in Florence over a field including Uganda’s world record-holder Joshua Cheptegei as he set a European record of 12min 48.45sec, the fastest run this year.

Sifan Hassan of The Netherlands will return to the home track in Hengelo where she set a European 10,000 metres record of 29min 36.67sec last year and will again contest the 25-lap discipline at tomorrow's World Athletics Continental Tour Gold meeting.

Britain’s Dina Asher-Smith coped best in driving wind and rain to beat a stellar 100 metres field including United States rival Sha’Carri Richardson as England’s north-east town of Gateshead hosted the opening Wanda Diamond League meeting of the season.

Sprint rivals Dina Asher-Smith and Sha'Carri Richardson have become the latest high-profile athletes to reject the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) stance against podium protests at Tokyo 2020 and other Games.

The announcement last week of the death of Lee Evans, the 1968 Olympic 400 metres gold medallist, re-focused attention on the athlete protests - by him and several United States team mates - that marked those Games in Mexico.