Allyson Felix gets the Diamond League season underway in Doha today in the women’s 400m, fresh from a successful outing at the Penn Relays where she starred as part of the American 4x100 and 4x400 teams.
Felix is in training for a possible attempt at the 200-400m double at this summer’s World Athletics Championships in Daegu, South Korea, and headlines a meet hit by the last-minute withdrawal of men’s 800m world record holder David Rudisha of Kenya.
“Doha, with its warm weather and welcome, is always a nice place to start up the season,” said Felix, the Los Angeles native who is the reigning three-time 200m world outdoor champion and a nine-time winner on Qatari soil.
Her chief rivals will likely be Amantle Montsho of Botswana and Briton Nicola Sanders, while compatriot and two-time world indoor 60m hurdles champion Lolo Jones will seek to wrap up the 100m hurdles.
France will look for success from their two best achieving athletes of the moment, triple jumper Teddy Tamgho and Renaud Lavillenie in the pole vault.
Lavillenie is targeting a vault of around 5.80m in today’s opening Diamond League meet, which will not be attended by Australia’s reigning world and Olympic champion Steve Hooker.
“This season’s progamme is the Diamond League and two professional meetings (in France), with the goal being the world champs,” said Lavillenie, who stormed to the European indoor title in March with an outstanding 6.03m.
His team-mate Tamgho has happy memories of Doha, the 21-year-old pulling off a then-world record 17.90m jump on his way to the world indoor title in March 2010.
The men’s 800m was hit by the late pull-out of Rudisha, who last year twice bettered Wilson Kipketer’s long-standing record in the two-lap race.
The Kenyan was suffering from an injury to his left foot that prevented him from training over the past week, and was joined on the sidelines by Sudan’s double world indoor champion Abubaker Kaki (leg).
The withdrawals open the way to the podium for Kenya’s world silver medallist Alfred Kirwa Yego and his compatriot Asbel Kiprop, the reigning Olympic champion.
The men’s 3,000m enjoys a high-class field headed by Eliud Kipchoge, a five-time winner in the Doha Grand Prix.
The 2008 Olympic 5,000m silver medallist will be up against 2008 world indoor champion Tariku Bekele from Ethiopia, and countrymen Edwin Cheruiyot Soi, the Olympic 5,000m bronze medallist and Augustine Kiprono Choge.
American Walter Dix runs in the 200m, in which he has a best of 19.69sec, the seventh fastest of all time, while there will be high hopes for locals Mutaz Barshim and Rashid al-Mannai in the men’s high jump.
IAAF probe
Meanwhile, world athletics’ governing body, the IAAF, has vowed to sort out an untimely calendar clash that has left the opening Diamond League meet shorn of a raft of headline sprinters.
Not one Jamaican sprinter will be on show in the Qatari capital, with the Jamaica International Invitational meeting in Kingston being held tomorrow.
“We regret the clash of dates between Kingston and Doha,” acknowledged IAAF general secretary Pierre Weiss.
“Kingston is now an IAAF meet after being promoted from its continental standing.
“It has been held on the same weekend in May for 25 years, and attracts the top US and Jamaican athletes.
“That said, it is not good, and we will do everything next year not have this clash.”