The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Uganda has cleared four athletes to travel for the Monaco Diamond League slated for Friday 14 August 2020 at the Principality’s Louis II Stadium in Monaco.
This was confirmed on Wednesday morning by the Uganda Athletics Federation (UAF) President Dominic Otuchet ahead of meet that will be a Wanda Diamond League fixture.
The four athletes are; world champions, Joshua Cheptegei and Halimah Nakaayi plus Winnie Nannyondo and Samuel Kisa.
Uganda’s participation at the event was still pending of recent due to the global tight travel restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
With the noose on the athletes’ travel loosened a bit, Uganda’s quartet will be among the major stars set to compete at the event after the series was disrupted by the pandemic.
Ugandan legion will be headlined by Joshua Cheptegei who was the first Ugandan to be confirmed for the do, and he will be joined by compatriot and 800m world champion Halimah Nakaayi as another athlete to watch.
Following her triumph in Doha last year, Nakaayi returns to action as the woman to beat over 800m, and will be out to claim her second ever win on the Diamond League circuit.
Ugandan pair of Winnie Nannyondo and Samuel Kisa will also join a huge cast of world record-holders and world championship medallists at the event.
The Monaco Diamond League event will be the first of 2020, and although COVID-19 had prevented the world’s best athletes from competing together for many months, many high-profile track and field stars will be racing once again.
The Monaco event, also known as the Herculis EBS Meeting, will be the first in-person Diamond League event of the season. There have been two Diamond League exhibitions so far in 2020: the Impossible Games in Oslo and the Inspiration Games, which were run in place of the Zurich event.
The Diamond League is an annual series of elite track and field athletic competitions comprising 15 of the best invitational athletics meetings. The series sits in the top tier of the World Athletics (formerly known as the IAAF) one-day meeting competitions.