{"id":2777,"date":"2025-06-16T09:01:48","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T09:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lausanne.diamondleague.com\/anita-protti-ajla-del-ponte-emma-van-camp-one-passion-one-meeting\/"},"modified":"2025-06-16T09:07:40","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T09:07:40","slug":"anita-protti-ajla-del-ponte-emma-van-camp-one-passion-one-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lausanne.diamondleague.com\/en\/anita-protti-ajla-del-ponte-emma-van-camp-one-passion-one-meeting\/","title":{"rendered":"Anita Protti, Ajla Del Ponte, Emma Van Camp: one passion, one meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>They may be from different generations, at least the youngest and the oldest, but Emma Van Camp, Ajla Del Ponte and Anita Protti share two things in common: a passion for athletics and a special connection to Athletissima, a thread that runs through each of their careers. Here are selected moments from a roundtable discussion held on 13 June during a press event in Lausanne.  <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n<p>As an official ambassador for the meeting, <strong>Ajla Del Ponte<\/strong> opened with some good news. After two injury-plagued seasons, she plans to return to the track in July, and of course, to compete at Athletissima on 20 August, especially in the 4&#215;100 m relay. \u201cThe crowd is always on their feet for that race. There\u2019s so much emotion, it really pushes us to go faster. You see familiar faces in the stands,\u201d said the <sup>fifth-place<\/sup> finisher in the 100 m final at the Tokyo 2021 Olympics and European Indoor 60 m champion  <\/p>\n\n<p>Eight years younger, <strong>Emma Van Camp<\/strong>, now 20, has recently made a name for herself, earning her first major senior selections as part of Switzerland\u2019s 4&#215;100 m relay team at the World Relay Championships in Guangzhou and at the European Indoors in Apeldoorn, where she reached the semi-finals of the 60 m. In China, the Lausanne-Sports athlete from Valais helped the team qualify for the World Championships in Tokyo this September. \u201cWhen I was younger, I used to watch the 4&#215;100 m girls like Ajla and Mujinga Kambundji. That really inspired me and made me want to be part of the team one day,\u201d she explained.   <\/p>\n\n<p><strong>Anita Protti<\/strong> didn\u2019t have the relay to drive her forward, but Athletissima played a key role in her journey too. \u201cSetting the Swiss 400 m record at La Pontaise in 1987 was a huge moment. And of course, finishing <sup>second<\/sup> in the 400 m hurdles behind the star Sandra Farmer-Patrick, that was a race the crowd was really waiting for, and they carried me all the way,\u201d recalled the 1990 European silver medallist in the 400 m hurdles, who held the national record in the event for 28 years. \u201cAfter I retired, I came back to Athletissima every year, as a spectator.\u201d      <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>They may be from different generations, at least the youngest and the oldest, but Emma Van Camp,...","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":2785,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,33],"tags":[],"city":[],"class_list":["post-2777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lausanne","category-lausanne-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lausanne.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lausanne.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lausanne.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lausanne.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lausanne.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2777"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lausanne.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2778,"href":"https:\/\/lausanne.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2777\/revisions\/2778"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lausanne.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lausanne.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lausanne.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lausanne.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2777"},{"taxonomy":"city","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lausanne.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/city?post=2777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}