2010 Diamond League

2010 IAAF Diamond League
Edition	1st
Dates	14 May–27 August
Meetings	14
Diamond Races	32
Ambassadors	14
World records	0
Total prize money (US$)	6.63 million
2011 →

The 2010 IAAF Diamond League was the first edition of the Diamond League, an annual series of fourteen one-day track and field meetings. The series began on 14 May in Doha, Qatar and ended on 27 August in Brussels, Belgium.

Superseding the European-centred IAAF Golden League, the Diamond League was the IAAF's first intercontinental series of one-day track and field meetings. Expanding upon the idea of the former Golden League jackpot, there were 32 separate Diamond Races, involving 16 men's and 16 women's track and field events – each of the events featured seven times only over the course of the fourteen meetings of the 2010 Diamond League, and the best athlete in each event won a Diamond Trophy. The total available prize money for the series was US$6.63 million.

For infrastructure reasons the men's and women's hammer throw events were not included in the IAAF Diamond League. For this reason the IAAF created a Hammer Throw challenge.

For the first time, some of the world's foremost track and field athletes were centrally contracted to an athletics meeting series. For the 2010 series the contracted athletes – called Diamond League Ambassadors – included figures such as Usain Bolt, Kenenisa Bekele, Yelena Isinbayeva and Blanka Vlašić.

Prior to the series, former World Champion Steve Cram stated that he believed that, through greater television exposure, and mutual responsibility between the IAAF and promoters, the 2010 Diamond League would raise the profile of the sport of athletics.

A total of fourteen athletes were given Diamond League Ambassador status, with the intention of bringing attention to some of the sport's foremost competitors. There are seven male and seven female athletes, and the division between track and field specialists is also evenly divided.

...
Wikipedia