Jenny Simpson has 2016 Olympic bronze and 2017 World silver, but it’s been three years since she won a Diamond League race. Opportunity knocks in a familiar place on Sunday, live on NBCSN and NBC Sports Gold.
Simpson headlines a 1500m field in Stockholm that includes Olympic teammate Brenda Martinez and Brit Laura Muir.
NBC Sports Gold coverage starts at 9 a.m. ET and continues with NBCSN’s broadcast coverage at 10, capped by the women’s 1500m at 11:51 a.m.
Simpson knows Stockholm well. She won her first post-collegiate international race there in 2009, when she was a steeplechaser known as Jenny Barringer (though her Stockholm win was in the 5000m).
Then in 2014, Simpson won a Diamond League 1500m in Stockholm, beating a field including the world’s top runners -- Genzebe Dibaba, Abeba Aregawi and Sifan Hassan, en route to the season title.
After ceding to U.S. Olympic 5000m runner Shelby Houlihan in the final 100 meters at the Prefontaine Classic two weeks ago, Simpson can reassert her 1500m prowess on Sunday.
Here are the Stockholm entry lists. Here’s the schedule of events (all times Eastern):
7:25 a.m. ET -- Women’s Pole Vault
9 -- Women’s High Jump
9:20 -- Men’s Long Jump
9:38 -- Men’s Pole Vault
9:49 -- Men’s 100m
10:03 -- Men’s 400m Hurdles
10:11 -- Women’s 800m
10:20 -- Women’s 100m
10:30 -- Men’s 800m
10:35 -- Men’s Discus
10:40 -- Men’s 5000m
10:45 -- Women’s Long Jump
11 -- Women’s 400m
11:15 -- Women’s 100m Hurdles
11:30 -- Men’s 1000m
11:40 -- Men’s 200m
11:51 -- Women’s 1500m
Here are five events to watch:
Men’s Long Jump -- 9:20 a.m. ET
Olympic champion versus world champion. South African Luvo Manyonga has won all five head-to-heads with American Jeff Henderson since Henderson edged him by one centimeter for gold in Rio, according to Tilastopaja.org. In fact, Manyonga has lost just once since Rio, indoors or outdoors, and has the two farthest jumps in the world this year. Henderson ranks No. 3 in the world this year, recording his best leap since 2015.
Men’s 400m Hurdles -- 10:03 a.m. ET
The revelation in track and field so far this outdoor season has been Qatar’s Abderrahman Samba. The 22-year-old debuted in the 400m hurdles last year and is now ranked 14th all-time in the event, having clocked the fastest time in the world since 2010 (and backing it up with the next-two fastest times for the year). Here, Samba and world champion Karsten Warholm of Norway go head-to-head for the third time in 11 days. Samba relegated Warholm to second place in the previous races.
Men’s Discus -- 10:35 a.m. ET
Deepest field of the meet? The top four finishers from 2017 Worlds and the top five men in the world this year. Lithuanian Andrius Gudzius, the world champion, has four of the top five throws of 2018. But Jamaican Fedrick Dacres beat him at the Rome Diamond League meet. Such is the state of Jamaican athletics that the nation has two of the top six discus throwers in the world this year versus one of the top 20 sprinters in the 100m and 200m combined.
Men’s 200m -- 11:40 a.m. ET
The 200m was once dominated by the U.S. and Jamaica, which combined to win every Olympic medal in the event between 2004 and 2012 and 19 of the 24 world championships medals between 2001 and 2015. Times have changed. Eight men from eight different countries across four continents have broken 20 seconds so far this year. Three of them meet here, headlined by surprise world champion Ramil Guliyev of Turkey and Steven Gardiner of the Bahamas, both chasing the world lead of 19.69 seconds shared by South African Clarence Munyai and American Noah Lyles.
Women’s 1500m -- 11:51 a.m. ET
Simpson not only eyes her first Diamond League win in three years, but also her first track victory over a field including Muir since 2015. The 25-year-old Brit has emerged the last few seasons as a force in one of the sport’s deepest events. Muir was fourth at the 2017 Worlds, second at 2018 World Indoors (Simpson wasn’t in the field) and passed Simpson in the final strides for second behind Houlihan at the Pre Classic two weeks ago. Muir has been faster than Simpson in five of their last six meetings on the track.
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