Before appearing at Letzigrund Stadium on Thursday, a number of Weltklasse Z\u00fcrich stars met with children aged 7 to 15 years for a very special training session. One of the most popular celebrity coaches was of course new European champion Kariem Hussein.<\/p>\n
Eleven days after his stunning run for 400m h gold, Hussein returned to his home arena to meet and train with the city\u2019s youngest athletics fans. It was no surprise that the group of kids who wanted to try hurdling was particularly large this year: \u201cI came to see Kariem,\u201d said Safiya Schwarz, one of the fans who became interested in the sophisticated event because of the 25-year-old Swiss star.<\/p>\n
Once a football player, Hussein remembers his own first steps in hurdling well: \u201eIt felt great right away. Almost like love at first sight.\u201d Today, only few years down the road, the model athlete is European champion \u2013 and a crowd favourite. He signed autographs, took photographs with fans of all ages, and talked to media representatives: \u201cI am really looking forward to race here on Thursday.\u201d
The international stars enjoyed the traditional training session, as well: \u201eThis is a great way of introducing our sport to kids. I will keep the idea in mind for our meeting in the Bahamas,\u201d said Chris Brown, 4x400m Olympic champion and meeting promoter.<\/p>\n
Kambundji and Felix in Thun, B\u00fcchel and Rudisha in Teufen<\/strong> Photo gallery<\/link>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An unforgettable experience for the youngest Weltklasse Z\u00fcrich fans: Two days prior to the...","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":314,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"city":[],"class_list":["post-384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-zurich"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurich.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurich.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurich.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurich.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zurich.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurich.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurich.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurich.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurich.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384"},{"taxonomy":"city","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurich.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/city?post=384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Once again, several athletes also travelled to various Swiss towns to share their passion for athletics with kids. Swiss sprint record holder Mujinga Kambundji and Olympic champion Allyson Felix (USA) trained with a group of motivated kids in Thun, while 800m athlete Selina B\u00fcchel and world record holder David Rudisha (KEN) met with many excited fans in Teufen. All in all, more than 1000 children participated in the Weltklasse Z\u00fcrich training sessions at towns in the German-speaking part of Switzerland and in Ticino.<\/p>\n