Britain’s Alex Yee and France’s Cassandre Beaugrand, the men’s and women’s Olympic triathlon champions from Paris 2024, are both lining up at the Monaco Diamond League on July 10. Yee will race the 5,000m, his first Diamond League appearance since 2019. Beaugrand will run the 3,000m, her first Diamond League start ever.
Yee, 28, confirmed his entry on Instagram Thursday with a photo of himself wearing a shirt that read, “I’m racing the Monaco Diamond League 5,000m!!”
“Out of my depth.. but that’s where I love to be! LFG,” he wrote in the caption. A second graphic shared in the same post carried a line that summed up the move: “I’ve probably bitten off more than I can chew but lets have fun and experience as the detour continues!”
A seven-year return to the Diamond League
The London 2019 Müller Anniversary Games was the last time Yee toed a Diamond League start line. He ran 13:29 over 5,000m that evening. In the seven years since, his track racing has been sparse. He won a 3,000m at the Twilight meet in 2020 in 7:45, and last year clocked 13:13 over 5,000m in Belgium, the personal best he carries into Monaco.
That 13:13 is competitive, but Monaco’s 5,000m typically sits well under 13:00. Yee’s framing of being “out of my depth” is honest. He has spent most of the past five years building Olympic and World Triathlon Championship Series titles, not chasing track splits in Europe. His road work has shown the engine is there. He ran 2:06:38 at the Valencia Marathon last December, the second-fastest marathon by a British athlete. He has also dealt with the cost of stretching across disciplines, including an acute overload injury in the weeks after his 2025 London Marathon debut.
Beaugrand’s “dream” race at her home club
Beaugrand’s story has a different shape. The 28-year-old Frenchwoman grew up in Antibes and trained as a junior at the Monaco club. The Herculis meet, the Diamond League’s stop in Monte Carlo, sat in front of her every summer as a child.
“This little girl ran a 1,000m in a children’s race at the Monaco meeting before watching the champions,” Beaugrand wrote on Instagram, sharing a photo of herself as a kid on the Herculis track. “You have to pinch me.”
She told the French sports daily L’Équipe that the meet has stayed with her since.
“My dream of competing in the Diamond League goes back a long way. I used to look at it with childlike wonder, thinking I wanted to be there someday,” she said in an interview published Thursday.
After winning Olympic triathlon gold in Paris, Beaugrand had a difficult 2025 season and pulled back. She told AFP she chose to refocus on running this year and “find things that motivated me.”
“I thought, why not try athletics? I even felt silly for not having done it sooner,” she said.
The return has gone well. In April she broke the French 10km record in Lille with 30:52. In May she set a French 5,000m record of 14:40.77, a mark that has since been broken.
A 3,000m field that includes Faith Kipyegon
Beaugrand is realistic about what Monaco will look like. The 3,000m field is expected to include Faith Kipyegon, the Kenyan world-record holder over 1,500m and the mile, who opened her 2026 season with a world-leading 5,000m in Shanghai.
“I’ll be running against really strong girls. I’m going to try not to be ridiculous,” Beaugrand told L’Équipe. “It’s hard to have expectations for an event I haven’t done in ages. I have no real time goal.”
She added that running at Herculis carries a personal weight. “Monaco is still my club. It means much more to do it there. I’m going to feel like I’m running at home.”
Monaco’s Herculis EBS meeting is scheduled for July 10, 2026.
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