Diamond League spotlight will be focused on sprint sensations

Sprint fans are in for a treat at the Shanghai Diamond League meet on Saturday, when some of the fastest men and women on the planet will be burning up the track.

No fewer than eight Rio Olympic finalists will compete in the men's 200m and women's 100m events, with four past or present Olympic champions in the hunt for early-season points on the IAAF's global circuit of one-day meetings.

Star billing goes to double Olympic champion Elaine Thompson of Jamaica, who returns to China for the first time since winning silver in the 200m at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing.

The 24-year-old went on to make history when she became the first Jamaican woman to take two Olympic sprint golds by storming to victory twice in Rio last summer.

She broke her nation's 100m record when she clocked 10.70 seconds at the Jamaican Championships in early July and remained unbeaten over that distance throughout 2016.

That's a record she will be keen to maintain in Shanghai when she faces a world-class field that includes Olympic silver medalist Tori Bowie, plus Olympic and world long jump champion Tianna Bartoletta, and Rio 100m and 200m finalists, Michelle-Lee Ahye of Trinidad and Tobago and Marie-Josee Ta Lou of Cote d'Ivoire.

Add to the mix the experienced Jamaican, Veronica Campbell-Brown, a double Olympic and former world 200m champion, and Thompson will have a fight on her hands to claim maximum points in her Shanghai Diamond League debut.

The scrap for points could be even tighter in the men's 200m, which features the sprinters who placed fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh in the Rio half-lap final.

Britain's 2014 European champion, Adam Gemili, just missed out on an Olympic medal when he finished fourth ahead of the Netherlands' European 100m gold medallist, Churandy Martina.

The USA's former world and Olympic 400m champion LaShawn Merritt was sixth in the Rio 200m final while Panama's former world silver medalist Alonso Edward was seventh.

The four will meet again in Shanghai where they will lineup alongside two other sub-20-second men - American Ameer Webb and Jamaican Julian Forte - plus the Chinese record holder, Xie Zhenye, who made the 100m semifinals in Rio and helped China to fourth place in the 4x100m relay.

Two world champions will meet in the men's 100m, a non-Diamond League event, when Kim Collins and Justin Gatlin go head-to-head.

Collins won the world title in 2003 and was a semifinalist in Rio at age 40, while Gatlin won the spring double at the 2005 worlds in Helsinki and took Olympic silver in Rio.

The home crowd will be rooting for Su Bingtian, another Rio semifinalist, as he aims to better his own national record of 9.99.

Jump rivalries resume

Olympic jump champions Derek Drouin and Jeff Henderson will face rivals they beat to claim gold in Rio last August.

Canada's Drouin cleared 2.38m in the high jump to beat Qatar's Mutaz Barshim by 2cm, while Henderson leapt to 8.38m in the final round of the long jump to snatch victory from South Africa's Luvo Manyonga by just 1cm.

Also looking for revenge over Drouin will be China's Zhang Guowei, who finished second to the Canadian for gold at the 2015 worlds in Beijing.

Drouin is making his Shanghai Diamond League debut, while Barshim returns to Shanghai seeking a third victory at China's premier one-day international athletics meeting.

Barshim set a Shanghai Stadium record of 2.38m to win the Diamond two years ago after topping the field with a leap of 2.33m in 2013.

The high jump is unlikely to be a straightforward three-way tussle, however, with 2016 Diamond Race high jump champion Erik Kynard also in the field.

The US champion was seventh in his previous Shanghai appearance in 2015, but the London 2012 Olympic silver medalist leapt 2.35m to secure the Diamond Race trophy in Brussels last September and will be keen to make a winning start to his title defense.

Henderson returns to Shanghai for the third time in three years after finishing second in 2015 and fourth last May when China's Gao Xinglong took top honors.

This year he faces not only Manyonga, making his Shanghai debut, but also Australia's world silver medalist, Fabrice Lapierre, who was third last year and went to lift the Diamond Race in Brussels after consistently placing in the top three throughout last year's campaign.

Hurdles heroes

A roll call of recent champ-ions and record breakers will line up for the two hurdles events when Rio Olympic gold medalists Omar McLeod and Kerron Clement face tough tests.

Jamaican McLeod produced the world's fastest time of the season to win the Shanghai meet's traditional closing event 12 months ago, clocking 12.98.

The 22-year-old will have to be at his best again this year as he faces a field worthy of any global final.

Spain's Orlando Ortega, the Cuba-born sprinter who took silver in Rio, could provide the main opposition, but it will be a hard race to call with a line-up including 2013 world champion David Oliver, 2012 Olympic champion and world-record holder Aries Merritt, 2015 world gold and silver medalists, Sergey Shubenkov and Hansle Parchment, and China's own Asian Games champion, Xie Wenjun.

It will be just as tough for Clement to take maximum points in the 400m hurdles.

The double Olympic and double world champion takes on the two men who joined him on the Rio podium - Boniface Mucheru of Kenya and Turkey's Yasmani Copello, who set national records to take silver and bronze respectively.

Clement could only place seventh in Shanghai last May but went on to win the Diamond Race for the one-lap hurdles with victories in London and Zurich. Mucheru picked up the African title and Copello won European gold in Amsterdam last July.

Mucheru's Olympic final run improved the Kenyan record set by Nicholas Bett to win the Beijing 2015 world title. After being disqualified in the Olympic heats, Bett will want to make a positive start in 2017 as he returns to Shanghai after finishing out of the points in sixth place last year.

Premier pole vaulters

An all-star cast takes center stage for the men's pole vault in Shanghai as two world champions, the Olympic gold medalist and the world record holder all vie for points.

Olympic champion and Brazilian hero Thiago Braz makes his Shanghai debut ahead of his bid to add the world championship crown in London later this year to his Rio gold from August, when he beat the reigning champion and world No 1, Renaud Lavillenie.

The two will lock horns again in Shanghai, with the Frenchman looking for maximum points as he bids to win the Diamond Trophy for a record eighth time.

The 30-year-old three-time European champion makes no secret of his love for the league, having won the Diamond Race more times than any other athlete.

The lineup also includes the two most recent world champions - Canada's 2015 hero Shawn Barber and Germany's 2013 champ Raphael Holzdeppe.

Holzdeppe finished second to Barber in Beijing two years ago but has been struggling to find top form since then, while Barber was third in Shanghai last May but could only finish 10th in Rio. Both feel they have something to prove against the three Olympic medallists.

Iaaf Diamond League News - China Daily