Nigeria’s Queen of the track, Tobi Amusan, is likely to miss the final of the 2025 Diamond League in Zurich.
The final kicked off on Wednesday as top athletes battled for a whopping $50,000 prize in various disciplines.
Amusan booked her place in the final of the event after earning 27 points to emerge as the second-best Athlete in her discipline.
World Athletics released the official start list for the event, and Amusan’s name was missing without any explanation.
The 28-year-old has now been replaced by the Bahamas’ Devynne Charlton ahead of the final of her discipline on Thursday night.
However, a top Athletics coach, who craved anonymity, told journalists that Amusan may have withdrawn from the final in order to focus on the World Championships in Tokyo in September.
He said, “With the World Championships in Tokyo barely 14 days away, no athlete at her level will want to take the risk of running in the Diamond League final. Yes, the cash ($50,000) and title are tempting, but the prestige of the World Championships is much more than that.”
Amusan was eyeing a third Diamond League trophy in Zurich after previous victories in 2021 and 2022.
A fourth overall triumph would have put her level with Dawn Harper-Nelson’s record of four Diamond League 100m hurdles titles.
Amusan also holds the meet record with a time of 12.29 s, which she ran in September 2022 to claim her second Diamond League title.
Charlton, reigning world champion Danielle Williams and her Jamaican compatriot Ackera Nugent, Dutch runner Nadine Visser, Ditaji Kambundji of Switzerland and her compatriot Selina von Jackowski, as well as the American trio Tonea Marshall, Grace Stark and Kendra Harrison, will battle it out for the trophy in the final.
Attention will be shifted to the Nigerian duo of Nathaniel Ezekiel and Udodi Onwuzurike.
Nathaniel Ezekiel has been one of the breakthrough stars of Nigerian athletics this season.
The 22-year-old broke the national 400m hurdles record five times in 2025, clocking 47.31s in Silesia — a mark ranked among the year’s global top five.
Initially outside the qualification zone, he earned his ticket to Zurich after the withdrawals of Rai Benjamin and Alison dos Santos.
He will battle it out against world leader Karsten Warholm (46.28s) in what promises to be the toughest race of his career. No Nigerian has ever reached the podium in this event in Zurich.
Onwuzurike has been drawn in lane one of the men’s 200m, where Olympic champion Letsile Tebogo will start in lane six, just inside reigning world champion Noah Lyles in lane seven.
He is the youngest of the team. Despite injuries disrupting his season, he squeezed into the 200m final after placing third in Brussels (20.29s) and benefited from late withdrawals.
