Tomorrow's penultimate Diamond League meeting of the season in Rome's Stadio Olimpico offers Armand Duplantis and Karsten Warholm one of their last likely opportunities in 2020 of attaining the new world record marks to which they have come so tantalisingly close in recent months.

While Karsten Warholm and Ryan Crouser fell a little short of the world records they had been targeting at the Golden Spike meeting in Ostrava, an evening of compelling competition was highlighted by momentous struggles in the men’s triple jump and 5000 metres events.

Tomorrow's Golden Spike meeting in the Czech city of Ostrava features a fresh world record holder in Sifan Hassan, but the keener focus will be on two athletes teetering on the brink of setting new global marks – Karsten Warholm and Ryan Crouser.

Karsten Warholm came agonisingly close to breaking the world 400 metres hurdles world record of 46.78 seconds at the Wanda Diamond League meeting in Stockholm, clocking 46.87 in a race where he had done everything right apart from knocking over the last hurdle.

Timothy Cheruiyot and Jakob Ingebrigtsen - the respective world and European 1500 metres champions - will resume their intense rivalry at the Wanda Diamond League meeting in Stockholm tomorrow following their epic race at the opening of the series in Monaco eight days ago.

Uganda’s 23-year-old Joshua Cheptegei, world 10,000 metres champion and world cross country champion last year, added another indelible achievement to his CV in Monaco tonight as he marked the opening Wanda Diamond League meeting of the season with a world 5,000m record of 12min 35.36sec.

Karsten Warholm achieved his mission at the Impossible Games in Oslo tonight as, running alone in a largely empty stadium – but watched worldwide via a live TV link – he marked the sport’s first big break-out from coronavirus lockdown with a world best for the 300 metres hurdles of 33.78sec.

The largest and most significant athletics meeting of the pandemic-blighted year will take place with Oslo’s Bislett Stadium at its centre tomorrow night – the self-styled Impossible Games – with another similar event, the Inspiration Games, based in Zurich set to take place on July 9.

Eliud Kipchoge, who became the first man to run a marathon in under two hours last month, is among five finalists for the 2019 Male World Athlete of the Year award.

Karsten Warholm of Norway won one of the most keenly anticipated contests of the International Association of Athletics Federations World Championships here as he held off his two huge rivals, Rai Benjamin of the United States and home athlete Abderrahman Samba, to retain his 400 metres hurdles title.

Karsten Warholm produced the second-fastest 400 metres hurdles performance of all time at the first of the International Association of Athletics Federations Diamond League finals in Zurich, in a stunning 46.92sec.

Five Olympic champions, 11 world champions and 12 defending champions will converge on Zurich tomorrow, for the first of two International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Diamond League finals.

Norway’s Karsten Warholm set a European record in the 400 metres hurdles for the second time in as many races as he earned victory on the first of two days of action at London Stadium as part of the International Association of Athletics Federations Diamond League meeting.

The main part of a sell-out 14,200 crowd in Oslo tonight saw half their dream come true tonight when home runner Karsten Warholm won the men’s 400 metres hurdles in a European record of 47.33sec.

Cool and wet conditions are expected for tomorrow’s Bislett Games in Oslo – the fifth of this season’s International Association of Athletics Federations Diamond League meetings – but home athletes such as Karsten Warholm and the Ingebrigtsen brothers will be guaranteed to raise the temperature.