Mo Farah, Sifan Hassan, Brigid Kosgei and Faith Kipyegon aim to make history at the Diamond League exhibition event
Britain’s Mo Farah returns to race on the track for the first time since 2017 at Friday evening’s AG Memorial Van Damme in Brussels and he hopes to make history by setting the first world record of his highly-decorated career.
The four-time Olympic champion, who does have a world indoor two-mile best to his name, is among the group of athletes looking to rewrite the record books at the Wanda Diamond League exhibition event, with Farah targeting Haile Gebrselassie’s world one-hour record, while Sifan Hassan and Brigid Kosgei aim for the women’s mark and Faith Kipyegon has her eye on the world 1000m record.
Watch live
A live stream of the meeting will be available in more than 90 territories, including the UK, via the Wanda Diamond League YouTube channel below. The live stream will start at 19:00 UK time (20:00 CEST). Further broadcast info can be found here.
After switching his focus to road racing, last year Farah announced that he would be targeting a track return ahead of the Tokyo Olympic Games and in Brussels he will aim to break Gebrselassie’s 21,285km mark.
He will be joined by his training partner Bashir Abdi of Belgium.
“We will need an average time of 2 minutes and 49 seconds per kilometre to break the record,” said Farah. “It will be important to get through the first half of the race well, and then we will see.
“I love challenges and I’m really going to enjoy it. It would be a massive honour to step into the footsteps of Haile Gebrselassie.”
The women’s world record is Dire Tune’s 2008 mark of 18,517km and that event will see Kenya’s world marathon record-holder Kosgei make her track debut alongside Netherlands’ world 1500m and 10,000m champion Hassan.
Kipyegon’s 1000m target is to beat 2:28.98 – a mark the Kenyan Olympic 1500m champion missed by just 17 hundredths of a second in Monaco.
The exhibition meeting will also see Britain’s world heptathlon champion Katarina Johnson-Thompson contest the hurdles and high jump after her triathlon battle with Belgium’s Olympic heptathlon champion Nafissatou Thiam had to be cancelled due to Thiam’s withdrawal through injury.
World pole vault record-holder Mondo Duplantis is back in action, fresh from his 6.07m victory in Lausanne.
Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Britain’s Charlie Da’Vall Grice go in the 1500m.
Click here for a timetable, start lists and live results.
The women’s one-hour event is scheduled for 19:11 local time (18:11 UK), while the women’s 1000m is at 20:47 (19:47 UK) and the men’s one-hour event at 20:55 (19:55 UK).