Australia's Jessica Hull will open her 2026 season in the Wanda Diamond League opener in Keqiao on 16 May, taking the headline slot in a women's 1500m the meet organisers confirmed on Tuesday contains four of the current world top ten. The 30-year-old, the reigning 2000m world record holder and a Paris 2024 Olympic 1500m silver medallist, has been chasing her first career Diamond League victory over the distance and arrives in China as the pre-race favourite on paper after a 2025 season in which she went under 3:56 on four occasions.
Keqiao's 1500m organisers have assembled a deep field in keeping with the meeting's new status as the formal curtain-raiser of the Diamond League season. World indoor 800m silver medallist Tsige Duguma of Ethiopia is moving up in distance for the race, bringing the 1:56 range speed that powered her 2024 Olympic runner-up finish in Paris. Compatriot Birke Haylom, who ran 3:53.22 in the Doha 1500m last summer, and the 2024 USATF Olympic Trials champion Sinclaire Johnson of the United States are also on the start list, joined by Kenya's Dorcus Ewoi — currently world number 11 — and Britain's world indoor 1500m gold medallist Georgia Bell. The gap between the fastest and the 10th-best personal bests on the line is less than three seconds, the kind of spread that typically rewards whoever is boldest from 900 metres out.
For Hull the Keqiao start is a return to the circuit after a winter that the Australian spent training primarily at altitude in Flagstaff, Arizona, under coach Nic Bideau, with a short indoor block that produced a 3:59 mile at the Millrose Games in February. She has spoken openly about wanting to break 3:50 outdoors this season, a mark that has been achieved by only five women in history, and Keqiao's sea-level fast track and warm-but-manageable late-afternoon conditions offer the sort of controlled opener the Australian camp has favoured in recent campaigns. Hull's personal best of 3:50.83, set in Paris in 2024, already ranks her fifth on the all-time list.
The meet slot carries extra weight this year because the Shanghai-Keqiao event has been elevated to the opening leg of the 15-meeting Diamond League calendar following confirmation last autumn that Xiamen would move to 24 May. Tsungxiao Sports Centre, which hosted last year's meeting, has been refurbished for 2026, with a new Mondo Super X track laid down over the winter and the stadium light grid raised to improve evening broadcast quality. Wanda Diamond League commercial director Petr Stastny told Chinese state broadcaster CCTV earlier this month that the meet has sold out its 24,000-capacity tickets for the second year running.
The 1500m is far from the only race to watch in Keqiao. Olympic pole vault champion Armand Duplantis returns to defend his Diamond League title, four current and former world discus champions — Roje Stona, Daniel Stahl, Kristjan Ceh and Matthew Denny — will clash in the men's throw, and long jump champion Larissa Iapichino will begin her 2026 defence. But it is the women's 1500m that organisers have chosen as the headline race for China's nationally televised primetime window, a decision that underlines just how quickly women's middle-distance running has become the sport's most reliably box-office event.