France's Jimmy Gressier will attempt one of the most punishing world records in distance running at the 2026 Wanda Diamond League Finals in Brussels, taking aim at Mo Farah's one-hour mark of 21,330 metres in front of his European fan base.
The 28-year-old, the European 10,000m champion and 2025 World Athletics Championships 10,000m bronze medallist, has been entered in the Memorial Van Damme one-hour event scheduled for September 5. The Brussels meet has hosted the one-hour world record attempt twice before; Farah set the current mark on the King Baudouin Stadium track on September 4, 2020.
Gressier confirmed the attempt as part of his end-of-season programme during the European Athletics Indoor Premium Tour press obligations earlier this year, and his agent confirmed to European Athletics on Wednesday that the entry had been finalised. The Brussels Diamond League Finals will close the 2026 Wanda Diamond League season under the new 'Diamond+' structure, which has expanded the post-final prize pool to a record €60,000 for first place across all featured events.
Farah's record of 21,330 metres requires sustained 2 minute 49 second per kilometre work for 60 minutes — equivalent to 14 minutes per 5,000 metres. Gressier's career-best 5,000m of 12:51.20 and 10,000m of 26:53.81 give him the raw aerobic ceiling, but he has only contested the one-hour discipline once, finishing in 20,847 metres at the Stade Charlety in Paris in May 2024.
The Brussels organising committee — which negotiated with Wavin and ABN AMRO Bank to renew the meet's title sponsorship for the 2026 finals — has been pushing Gressier's attempt as the headline storyline for the European autumn season. Belgian fans will recall that the country's own Bashir Abdi, the Olympic marathon bronze medallist, holds the European one-hour record of 21,322 metres, set in the same Brussels session as Farah's world mark in 2020.
Gressier's calendar prior to Brussels has been built backwards from the September date. He is scheduled for the Diamond League meet in Stockholm on June 14 over 5000m, the Paris Diamond League over 5000m on August 22, and the Berlin ISTAF on August 30 over 10,000m. The 10,000m at Berlin will serve as the final tune-up over the longer distance before the one-hour record bid.
The last athlete to mount a serious assault on Farah's mark was Belgium's Isaac Kimeli, who attempted it in Brussels in 2023 and finished 73 metres short. France's last world record on a track came courtesy of Marie-José Pérec at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games — Gressier would be the first French male to hold an outdoor track world record since Stéphane Diagana's 400m hurdles run at Hayward Field in Eugene in 1995.
For European athletics, the attempt represents a circling-back to a discipline that had largely been forgotten outside Belgium until Farah's 2020 record. World Athletics has not yet decided whether to keep the one-hour event on the formal world record list beyond the 2027 World Championships cycle. Brussels organisers see it as a calling card. Gressier sees it as a once-in-a-career chance.
