Some 800m of high-quality women
The final is approaching World Athletics Indoor Tour, which will be held in Madrid on February 28, a world-class meeting that will bring together the best athletes on the planet on the Gallur tartan.
The women's 800m promises to be a great spectacle, with athletes of great international renown. Competing in Gallur will be Tsige Duguma, the Ethiopian athlete who was vice-champion at the Paris 2024 Olympics, where she set a personal best of 1:57.15 that gave her the silver medal. Last winter she had climbed to the top of a world indoor podium. She did so in Glasgow 2024, where she was crowned world indoor champion in the 800m, also achieving a personal best in the heats (1:58.35). At this stage of the season she arrives as the world leader of the year in this event, thanks to her performance at the Metz Meeting (France), with a time of 1:58.97, being the only athlete this year to have gone under 1:59.
She will be joined by Noélie Yarigo, the athlete from Benin, with dual French nationality. She was an Olympian in Rio 2016 and Paris 2024 and since 2015 she has not missed any outdoor world championships (2015, 2017, 2019, 2022 and 2023). After all these years in the world elite, she won her first international medal at the Glasgow 2024 indoor world championships, where, in addition to making her debut, she faced athletes such as Duguma, finally taking bronze. She also holds the French record for the 800m Short Track with 1:58.48, as well as the national record for the 1000m (2:36.30). It will not be her first participation in Madrid, as she won in Gallur in 2023 with 2:01.47.
However, Ethiopian Habitam Alemu has the best time of all the participants, both indoors (1:57.86 in 2024) and outdoors (1:56.71 in 2018), a mark that accredits her as the national record holder for her country in this distance and which she also holds in the 1000 m with a time of 2:34.11. Despite these great records, she has never climbed onto a top-level international podium. However, she is a regular in the finals of international championships. Of her four indoor world championships, she has managed to be a finalist in all of them (2016, 2018, 2022, 2024), finishing fifth in Glasgow 2024, behind, among others, the aforementioned Duguma and Yarigo. She is also a three-time Olympian (Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020, Paris 2024) achieving her best result in Tokyo with a sixth place. Alemu is another athlete who already knows what it is like to compete in Gallur as she won in 2021 with 1:58.94.
The Madrid Meeting will be a great prelude to the World Indoor Championships in Nanjing at the end of March, where Duguma will defend his gold, Yarigo his bronze and Alemu will fight to achieve his long-awaited international medal.
Don't miss the indoor athletics festival at this unique event in Madrid. For more information about the event and ticket sales, visit our website: madridindoorathletics.es