ATHLETICS – BAHRAIN’S former world champion and Paris 2024 Olympics silver-medallist Salwa Eid Naser will be hitting the track today in Athlos London in England.
The meeting is a silver-level event on this year’s World Athletics Continental Tour.
Naser will be racing in the women’s 400 metres, scheduled to be held at 10.36pm, Bahrain time.
She will be competing against some of the world’s best in the distance, many of whom are her regular rivals on the international athletics circuit.
Headlining the field is reigning Olympic champion, ex-world champion, and this year’s Diamond Trophy winner Marileidy Paulino from the Dominican Republic, who won the women’s 400m title last weekend at the World Athletics Ultimate Championship 2026 in Budapest, Hungary, where Naser also competed.
The race’s other competitors are Nickisha Pryce of Jamaica and Henriette Jaeger of Norway, both of whom were also part of the championship-contending field in the Hungarian capital, along with Natalia Bukowiecka from Poland and Stacey Ann Williams, also from Jamaica.
Naser heads into London with a season’s best of 49.27 seconds, which she clocked last month in Italy.
Her personal best is 48.14s, which is also an Asian and Bahraini record set in 2019.
Tonight’s Athlos meeting is expected to be the 28-year-old’s Bahraini last international competition before she begins her final preparations for the 20th Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan.
Naser is part of a 34-strong, full-strength Bahrain national team that will be going for gold in the Asiad’s athletics events, which is scheduled for Wednesday next week to September 29 at Nagoya’s 30,000-capacity Paloma Mizuho Stadium.
patrick@gdnmedia.bh