Jereem faces Tebogo in Diamond League 200m on August 22

SPRINTER Jereem Richards will hit the track for the first time since the July 26-August 11 Olympic Games when he lines up in the men’s 200-metre event at the Lausanne Diamond League in Switzerland on August 22.

Richards, 30, made the Olympic qualifying standard for both the 200m and 400m events, but opted to participate only in the latter event in Paris. He advanced to the 400m final, and finished an agonising fourth in a personal best 43.78 seconds – setting a new 400m national record in the process.

Richards was also a member of TT’s 4x400m relay team, which exited their competition after bringing up the rear in their semifinal heat in three minutes, 6.73 seconds (3:06.73).

Richards has a season’s best of 20.13 seconds in the 200m event, and in Lausanne, he will come up against newly crowned 200m Olympic champ Letsile Tebogo, who stunned favourite Noah Lyles in the 200m final in Paris with a 19.46 run on August 8. In the process, the 21-year-old Tebogo became Botswana’s first Olympic gold medallist.

Tebogo also helped Botswana to a second-place finish in the men’s 4x400m final on August 10.

The eight-man field for the 200m in Lausanne is a strong one, and features a total of four finalists from the men’s 200m final at the Paris Games.

Joining Tebogo and Richards will be the USA’s Erriyon Knighton, Liberia’s Joseph Fahnbulleh and Dominican Republic’s Alexander Ogando. Knighton placed fourth in the 200m final in Paris, with Ogando and Fahnbulleh placing fifth and seventh respectively.

The 200m race at the Lausanne Diamond League will also feature the USA’s Fred Kerley, who copped a bronze medal in an exciting men’s 100m final on August 4 in 9.81. Kerley’s countryman Lyles won the men’s 100m final ahead of Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson with a 9.79 clocking, in a tense photo-finish.

At his last Diamond League outing, Richards notched a third-place finish in London on July 20 in the men’s 400m event in 44.18.

A World Indoor champion over the 400m distance in 2022, Richards will be looking to remind the world about his class in the 200m event when he hits the Lausanne track.

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