Diamond League CFO Petr Stastny and Qatar’s Youth Olympics Champion Owaab Barrow pose for a photograph with the Diamond Trophy.
At a reception at the IAAF Heritage World Athletics Championships Exhibition in Doha, Qatar’s Youth Olympic 110m hurdles champion Owaab Barrow symbolically accepted loans to the exhibition of competition kit from two world and Olympic champion hurdlers.
USA’s Gail Devers sent the bodysuit she wore when winning the 1993 world 100m hurdles title in Stuttgart, her first of three world titles at that discipline. Devers also won the 100m in Stuttgart for a memorable sprint/hurdles double.
Fellow US sprint hurdler Allen Johnson sent his spikes from his 1997 world 110m hurdles title, the second of his quartet of world titles, on loan to the exhibition.
Accompanied by his coach Lee Christopher, the Aspire-based Barrow first watched clips of Devers and Johnson in action before receiving their kit. Devers and Johnson’s items will now be added to more than 140 other competition artefacts from famous champions which will be in the exhibition for six months. The display will close on October 7, a day after the end of the IAAF World Athletics Championships Doha 2019 (September 27 to October 6).
Devers and Johnson each won Olympic titles in their careers. Devers was a two-time 100m sprint champion, winning in Barcelona in 1992 and Atlanta in 1996. She also took a relay gold in 1996. Johnson claimed his Olympic 110m hurdles title at those same Atlanta 1996 Olympic Games.
The reception in the exhibition, which is located in the City Center Doha shopping mall, was held to celebrate the staging of today’s Doha Diamond League meeting. It was therefore extremely fitting that as a finale to tonight’s formalities that an IAAF Diamond League Trophy was permanently added to the IAAF Heritage Collection. Petr Stastny, the CFO of the IAAF Diamond League, made the handover of the trophy.
