Event Previews
100m
Justin Gatlin returns to Shanghai seeking his first Diamond League win of 2014 12 months after losing out over 200m to Olympic bronze medallist Warren Weir. The former world and Olympic champion faces another talented Jamaican this year in Nesta Carter, the man he pipped to take the world bronze medal in Moscow last August. Gatlin has the edge after beating Carter in Kingston on 3 May and will be gunning for his first sub-10s clocking of the season following last Sunday’s impressive 10.02s victory in Tokyo, run into a hefty headwind. Gatlin’s compatriots Michael Rodgers, Charles Silmon and Ryan Bailey, all world or Olympic relay medallists, should be among the challengers, as will the ever-green Kim Collins, the 2003 world champion from St Kitts and Nevis, still going strong at 38. Britain’s own veteran, Dwain Chambers, provides the European challenge, while domestic attentions focus on Su Bingtian who set a Chinese record to finish fourth over 60m at the World Indoor Championships in March.
800m
World champion Mohammed Aman has been forced to pull out with an injured hamstring aggravated when winning his opening Diamond League race of the year in Doha last weekend. But Olympic 1500m champion Taoufik Makhloufi steps down in distance to take his place. After winning the London 2012 title, the Algerian ran only once in the Diamond League last season but he began his 2014 campaign impressively by finishing fourth in the fast Doha 1500m, clocking 3:30.40. Mahkloufi’s main opposition in the 800m could come from Marcin Lewandowski, the 2010 European champion who has just missed a medal at the last two World Championships, while the in-form Erik Sowinski is one of three US half-milers looking to make an impression. The Kenyan challenge comes from former hurdler Jeremiah Mutai and 1500m world youth champion Robert Biwott. China’s Asian junior champion Teng Haining will get valuable international experience.
5000m
Moscow World Championships silver medallist Hagos Gebrhiwet is one of three talented Ethiopians in a race that features the four fastest 5000m runners of 2013 – Gebrhiwet, his compatriot Yenew Alamirew, Albert Rop of Bahrain and Edwin Soi who topped last season’s world lists. Soi will have fellow-Kenyan and Olympic bronze medallist Thomas Longosiwa for company plus former world junior silver medallist John Kipkoech, and 2010 world junior steeplechase champion Jonathan Ndiku. Turkey’s double European junior champion Ali Kaya gets his first taste of the big time at 20, while 35-year-old Bouabdellah Tahri of France moves up from steeplechase to take on the Africans at the longer distance.
110m hurdles
Always one of the highlights of the Shanghai meeting, this year’s men’s sprint hurdles is shaping up to be one of the best yet with all three 2013 world medallists in the field, plus the 2008 Olympic champion, a former world champion and two promising Chinese hopes in Xie Wenjun and Jiang Fan. World record holder Aries Merritt has withdrawn because of ill health, so all eyes will be on current world champion David Oliver who notched up his first DL win of the season with victory in Doha over Russia’s Moscow bronze medallist, the European champion Sergey Shubenkov, and Frenchman Pascal Martinot-Lagarde, a former world junior champion. Shubenkov and Martinot-Lagarde will take on Oliver again here, while the American’s other opponents include world silver medallist Ryan Wilson, Cuban Dayron Robles, the former world record holder and Olympic champion, and the 2009 world champion, Ryan Brathwaite of Barbados. Xie will be hoping for another strong performance in front of home fans after posting a personal best to finish third last year, while Jiang lines up against the world’s top men after winning the 2013 Asian title.
400m hurdles
World champion Jehue Gordon takes on the man he beat to Moscow gold, USA’s Olympic silver medallist Michael Tinsley, plus two other Americans in Johnny Dutch and Bershawn Jackson. The Trinidad and Tobago athlete will be looking to improve after finishing second behind Olympic champion Felix Sanchez in Kingston two weeks ago, while Tinsley ran the fastest time in the world this year when he clocked 48.57 at the Drake Relays last month. Jackson has also been under 49 seconds, as has South Africa’s LJ van Zyl, who’s also in the line-up along with Asian silver medallist Cheng Wen of China and Brazil’s South American champion Mahau Suguimati, a former Japanese hurdler.
Pole Vault
Renaud Lavillenie set the athletics world alight on 15 February when he broke Sergey Bubka’s long-standing world pole vault record in Donetsk and the flying Frenchman begins his bid for a fifth consecutive Diamond Race victory when he competes in Shanghai for the first time against Germany’s Raphael Holzdeppe, the man who defied him at the 2013 World Championships. Lavillenie’s leap at the Pole Vault Stars meeting was the highest ever achieved in indoor or outdoor competition and the reigning Olympic and European champion has now set his sights on breaking Bubka’s 20-year-old outdoor record of 6.14m. His current outdoor best is the French record of 6.02m from the London Diamond League meeting last July while he jumped 5.70m in USA this April, his opening outdoor contest of this year and the first since recovering from a foot injury sustained in Donetsk. That kept him out of the World Indoor Championships in Sopot where Konstantinos Filippidos won world indoor gold in Lavillenie’s absence. The Greek record holder is among the Frenchman’s challengers here along with two other Germans, Molte Mohr and Karsten Dilla.
Triple Jump
Olympic gold and silver medallists Christian Taylor and Will Claye will go head-to-head in a men’s triple jump contest that also sees the return of 2009 world champion Phillips Idowu to top-level competition after taking a year away from the sport. Taylor succeeded the Briton as world champion in 2011 but missed out on a Moscow medal last summer when he could only finish fourth. He was third here two years ago and will be looking to improve this time, as will fellow-American Claye who missed the cut in the Shanghai long jump 12 months ago. Russia’s world indoor champion Lyukman Adams makes his first outdoor appearance of the year and could be one to watch, while China’s hopes rest with Asian champion Cao Shuo. There’s also a Diamond League debut for Lázaro Martínez, the 16-year-old Cuban who won the world youth title last year and jumped beyond 17 metres for a world youth record in February.
Shot Put
The two-times world champion, David Storl, makes his outdoor season debut after a magnificent campaign in 2013. Storl won 10 contests last summer plus every competition he entered during the 2014 indoor season except the Sopot world indoor final which the German star lost to USA’s Ryan Whiting. Whiting will be one of Storl’s opponents in Shanghai alongside Poland’s Olympic champion Tomasz Majewski and the man he replaced as world champion, Christian Cantwell, the genial giant from USA who has three world indoor titles to his name and already leads the world this year with 21.85m. Cantwell and Whiting are two of five US putters in the field which also inlcudes the former world junior champion, Georgi Ivanoc from Bulgaria, and China’s Wang Guangfu, who won the East Asian Games title last year.
Javelin Throw
A re-match of last year’s contest in which Finland’s Tero Pitkämäki beat Czech Republic’s European champion Viteszlaw Vesely by nearly a metre as both broke the old meeting record with world leading throws. Vesely reversed the order at the World Championships and the two are expected to battle for honours again in Shanghai, with Russia’s Moscow bronze medallist Dmitriy Tarabin also in the hunt for Diamond League points after he was third last year. London Olympic champion Keshorn Walcott also returns 12 months after he made a disappointing Diamond League debut here, finishing sixth. This year, much attention will focus on Julius Yego, the Kenyan who came close to a sensational third place in Moscow after becoming the first man from his country to feature in a World Championships field event final. Pitkämäki’s fellow-Finn, Antti Ruuskanen, the London 2012 bronze medallist, is another Moscow finalist in the line-up, as is Kim Amb of Sweden and Egyptian record holder Abd Ihab El Rahman.