What to Watch for in Paris Diamond League Meeting
Friday’s IAAF Diamond League Meeting in Paris will do justice to the creation of the new meeting series in 2009. Having replaced the Golden League, the IAAF’s Diamond League was created in 2009 partly to facilitate more head-to-head meetings between the world’s best athletes, and the event in Paris is full of them.
Out of the spectator-friendly duels, it is the 100m face-off between Jamaican pair Asafa Powell and Usain Bolt that has warranted the most attention.
The race will see the two friends, who have both clocked a world’s best of 9.82 seconds in the event this season, seek to get the best out of each other.
Bolt has been undefeated in the distance since 2008, when Powell beat him to the finish line in Stockholm.
Powell has been known to struggle in major events such as the World Championships and Olympic finals. But having clocked 9.82 seconds in Rome this year, he will relish the chance of posing a serious challenge to Bolt in the event.
"My goal will be not to lose this race,” Bolt told reporters ahead of Friday’s showdown.
"Asafa has proven to be highly consistent this season, with a fair number of times close to the 9.80 mark. He is waiting for me."
Home crowd favourite in the 100m event will be Christophe Lemaitre, who recently set a national record of 9.98 seconds. Other notable starters are Jamaican Yohan Blake, the youngest sprinter to have broken the 10-second barrier in 2009, at 19 years of age.
The next remarkable duel was scheduled to occur in the 110m hurdles, where world record holder and Olympic champion Dayron Robles of Cuba was set to race US prospect David Oliver. However Robles has declined to participate due to a groin injury suffered during training.
The Cuban’s withdrawal leaves Oliver as the undisputed favourite in the short hurdles. Oliver has already come close to obtaining his goal of racing in 12.85 seconds this year, which would be a new world record.
On July 3, he set a new US national record by finishing in 12.90 seconds, rendering him the third fastest hurdler of all time in the event.
The 800m event will not include Kenya’s outstanding runner David Rudisha, but it will see an exciting duel between South Africa’s world champion Mbulaeni Mulaudzi and Sudanese runner Abubaker Kaki.
The first black South African athlete to be ranked as world no. 1, blank set his personal record of 1:42.86 in 2009.
At 18, Kaki became the youngest world indoor champion in 2008. On June 4 this year at the Diamond League Meeting in Oslo, Norway, he and Rudisha fought each other in a fast 800m race.
Kaki, who turned 21 in June, finished second in 1:42.69, a new world junior record.
Meanwhile, in the field, Stade de France’s eyes will be glued on the pole vault event, where Romain Mesnil will battle fellow Frenchman Renaud Lavillenie for a prestigious home victory.
The two will face tough competition from Olympic champion Steve Hooker from Australia.
IAAF’s argument for the creation of the Diamond League Meetings was that it would spread the prestige of the Golden League events around the globe and pit the world’s top athletes against each other on a more regular basis.
With only four of the 14 dates set outside of Europe, and none held in Australia, South America or Africa, the meetings may not have gone global just yet, but they have succeeded in setting up mouthwatering athletics duels.
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