Doha Diamond League 2025: Women’s 400m Preview

The Jetour Doha Diamond League meeting is only four days away and is sure to be an action-packed evening. This Friday, the competition will showcase some of the top athletes from around the world. In the women’s 400m, five women ranked inside of the top ten in the world appear on the start list.

The Doha meeting will be the first meeting of the year with the women’s 400 meters on the starting program. Here’s a look at the eight women scheduled to run.

Natalia Bukowiecka

• Country: Poland
• World ranking: 2
• Personal Best: 48.90 seconds
• Season Best: X

Natalia Bukowiecka (née Kaczmarek) is the silver medalist from the Paris Olympics and is currently ranked number two in the world. This will be her first competition in the individual 400-meter outdoors this season.

Salwa Eid Naser

• Country: Bahrain
• World ranking: 3
• Personal Best: 48.14 seconds
• Season Best: 48.67 seconds

Salwa Eid Naser is the current silver medalist at the Paris Olympics. She also won a silver medal from the World Championships in 2017 and gold from 2019. She has the fastest personal best in the field and has also run the fastest time in the world this year so far.

Amber Anning

• Country: Great Britain
• World ranking: 6
• Personal Best: 49.29 seconds
• Season Best: 50.85 seconds

Amber Anning is the current Indoor World Champion, having taken home gold in Nanjing in March with a time of 50.60 seconds (short track). She’ll be looking to win her first individual medal in the women’s 400 meters at the World Championships this September in Tokyo.

Lieke Klaver

• Country: Netherlands
• World ranking: 7
• Personal Best: 49.58 seconds
• Season Best: X

Lieke Klaver was a member of the gold medal-winning mixed 4×400 meter Dutch team last summer. She was also a member of the silver-winning women’s 4×400 meter team. She narrowly missed the podium at the 2022 World Championships in the individual 400 meters, finishing fourth.

Sada Williams

• Country: Barbados
• World ranking: 9
• Personal Best: 49.58 seconds
• Season Best: 51.27 seconds

Sada Williams has a bronze medal from each of the past two World Championships. She’s also coming off a season where she finished seventh at the Olympic Games.

Laviai Nielsen

• Country: Great Britain
• World ranking: 13
• Personal Best: 49.87 seconds
• Season Best: X

Laviai Neilson picked up two bronze medals at the Olympic Games last summer in the women’s and mixed 4×400 meters. So also has a silver medal from each of these events from the World Championships.

Susanne Gogl-Walli

• Country: Austria
• World ranking: 23
• Personal Best: 50.60 seconds
• Season Best: X

Susanne Gogl-Walli is coming off her personal record-setting campaign, where she ran 50.60 seconds last September in Zurich. She also made it into the semi-final last summer at the Paris Olympic Games.

Shafiqua Maloney

• Country: Saint Vincent
• World ranking:
• Personal Best: 50.63 seconds
• Season Best: 51.18 seconds

Shafiqua Maloney is currently ranked number seven in the women’s 800 meters, but this weekend she’ll be contesting the 400 meters. She’s raced everything from 400 meters to 1500 meters already this season. She finished fourth at the Olympic Games last year in the 800 meters.

The next event that will see the top women line up in this event is the Oslo competition on June 12th.

At the 2024 Doha Diamond League Meeting,  

The women’s 400m wasn’t contested at the 2024 Doha Diamond League Meeting. On the men’s side, Steven Gardiner of the Bahamas took gold with a time of 44.76 seconds. Muzala Samukonga of Zambia and Leungo Scotch of Botswana rounded out the rest of the podium with times of 45.07 seconds and 45.29 seconds, respectively.   

2025 Diamond League Women’s 400m schedule

A notable omission from this weekend is Marileidy Paulino, who is coming off her Olympic Gold medal campaign and currently holds the top rank in the world. Last week, she won the second meeting in the Grand Slam Track tour with a time of 49.21 seconds. We’ll likely see her race later in the summer at some of the other Diamond League meetings.

Other Diamond League Meetings including the women’s 400 meters in their program this year include:

• Stockholm on June 15
• Paris on June 20
• Monaco on July 11
• Silesia on August 16
• Lausanne on August 19
• Zurich (Diamond League Final) on August 27-28