Nigeria’s Blessing Okagbare-Ighoteguonor is one of the elite athletes billed to compete in the women’s 100m at this weekend’s Diamond League meeting in Paris. Okagbare will square up against World and Olympic champion, Shelly Ann Fraser-Pryce, her African rival, Murielle Ahouré who will all be part of a packed starting line-up.
Okagbare will be looking to gain more points to improve her standings on the Diamond Race table, with Ahouré currently leading with 6 points, two more than Fraser-Pryce and Okagbare who both have 4 points each. This makes for an enthralling race in Paris as any one of them who wins will establish a gap above the others.
On her day, Okagbare can defeat them but both athletes got the better of her in Eugene, where Fraser-Pryce and Ahouré both ran 10.81s, with the Jamaican getting the win. However races involving all three have always been tight, like was witnessed at the last World Championship in 2013 where all three of them finished on the podium in the 200m. Fraser-Pryce is the favourite for World Championship title in Beijing, and America’s Tori Bowie the dark horse, but Okagbare will want to prove a point as well. Aside these three favourites, Dafne Schippers and English Gardner would be hoping to stage an upset in the race.
Designated as the last event of the evening, the men’s 100m would have seen world record holder, Usain Bolt in action, but the Olympic champion withdrew from the contest due to an injury, further casting aspersions on his ability to defend his world title, especially with the threat of Justin Gatlin, who is the overwhelming favourite. However, Jamaican champion, Asafa Powell will be competing against American duo, Ryan Bailey and Mike Rodgers, with local-boy, Jimmy Vicaut also participating.
The women’s 5000m promises to be an entertaining encounter, one of the star events of the night as Genzebe Dibaba and Almaz Ayana will be gunning for the World Record(WR) in this meet. Tirunesh Dibaba’s seven-year-old record of 14:11.15 could be smashed, if her younger sister, Genzebe and their fellow Ethiopian, Almaz make well their promise. Both athletes were few seconds from equaling the WR, with Ayana running 14:14.32 in Shanghai and Dibaba doing 14:19:76 in Eugene.
The men 110m hurdles is stacked: David Oliver, Pascal Martinot and Arries Merrit all up against each other, while Kaliese Spencer is expected to dominate the women’s 400m hurdles. It will be interesting to see how David Verburg fares against Kirani James, having emerged as American champion with victory over LaShawn Merritt in the men 400m.
Away from the track, with the absence of Bohdan Bondanreko and Gouwei Zhang, Mutaz Barshim will be the favourite in the High Jump. However, Erik Kynard, currently the American champion would look to give the Qatari a strong test.
Renaud Lavillenie will be competing in front of his home fans, but he will be wary of the young Brazilian, Braz Thiago, who pushed him all the way at the Rome meet, although the French athlete is still expected to win the Pole Vault event.
Piotr Malachowski’s lead in the Discus event is under threat from Robert Urbanek who is just a point behind him on the table, and both men would hope to capitalise when they take to the field. In the women’s Shot Put, Valerie Adams will be making a comeback after almost a year out with an injury, and she will be hoping to usurp current leader, Christina Schwanitz.
With Paris’ Meeting Areva heralding the second half of the Diamond League, time is running out for some athletes on who would emerge winners as the season goes into home stretch.
Photo Credit: Zimbio.com
