Doha: Pole Vault world record holder Renaud Lavillenie will kick off his 2015 IAAF Diamond League campaign at the Doha 2015 meeting on May 15, one of four reigning Olympic champions organisers announced yesterday for the opening competition of the 14-meeting series.
There’s not a bigger name in the world of men’s track and field at the moment than that of Lavillenie, who has won the Diamond Race Trophy in the event in each of the series’ first five seasons.
“I’m really looking forward to competing in Doha. The conditions at the Qatar Sports Club can be very good for pole vaulting so I’ll certainly try to win and beat the meeting record,” said the 28-year-old Frenchman, who scaled a world record 6.16m in Donetsk, Ukraine, in February 2014.
Lavillenie cleared six metres or better in five of his nine competitions indoors this year, capped by a 6.04m clearance in Prague last weekend to win his fourth straight European indoor title.
One of the sport’s most dominant figures, Lavillenie has won 33 of his 34 competitions since the 2013 World Championships in Moscow where he was beaten into second place by Germany’s Raphael Holzdeppe.
The German, who also claimed Olympic and European bronze in 2012, will also be in the field at Qatar SC Stadium. The 25-year-old has topped 5.91m twice, most recently in Rome in 2013.
The field will also include Konstantinos Filippidis of Greece, the 2014 world indoor champion who raised the Doha meeting record in 5.82m in 2013, a national record. Indoors this year he cleared a season’s best 5.75m to finish fifth at the European indoors.
“We have set high standards in organising such an important and prestigious sporting event in previous years and we aim to continue in 2015 as well, at the highest possible level,” said Dahlan Al Hamad, President of the Qatar Athletics Federation (QAF).
“We have proved on numerous occasions that we have the expertise and the know-how to successfully deliver what we pledge; we have the means to justify our role as a key and trusted partner of IAAF, especially since we were recently honoured to stage the 2019 IAAF World Championships”, he aadded.
Lavillenie will be joined in Doha by fellow London 2012 gold medallists Sally Pearson, Sanya Richards-Ross and Christian Taylor.
But such is the strength in the women’s 100 metre hurdles that Pearson, at 12.28 the fifth fastest ever in the event, won’t be considered the only woman to beat.
Brianna Rollins, history’s third fastest courtesy of her scintillating 12.26 performance at the 2013 US championships and Dawn Harper-Nelson, the defending Diamond Race winner and fastest hurdler in 2014 are of the same calibre as Pearson.
With a 12.53 season’s best, Rollins wasn’t as fast in 2014, a campaign in which Harper-Nelson proved to be not only the fastest but the most consistent as well.
The 2008 Olympic champion – Harper-Nelson followed up by taking silver in London four years later with a 12.37 personal best— led the world at 12.44 last season, won her third successive Diamond Race Trophy and ended the year with a win at the Continental Cup.
Australian Pearson however, who also took the world title in 2011 and finished second two years later, cannot be discounted.
Another entrant from the quick US stable is Queen Harrison, a 2013 World championship finalist with a 12.43 career best from that year. Tiffany Porter, the 2014 European champion, is also in the field. The men’s 100m features another Olympic champion, Justin Gatlin, the winner in 2004 in Athens.
Last season the 33-year-old American re-emerged as the world’s top sprinter by producing the year’s fastest times in both the 100m and 200m clocking 9.77 and 19.68 respectively. Underscoring his dominance, he was undefeated in fifteen 100m races and three over 200m.
“I love racing in Doha,” said Gatlin, the event’s Diamond Race winner in 2013 and 2014. He won here in 2012, three months before racing to Olympic bronze in London.
“The track, the conditions and the crowd always help make a fast race. Hopefully we can do that again this season.”
The field will include Kim Collins, the 2003 world champion, who is also illustrating that sprinters can improve with age. Collins, who was unbeaten in nine 60m races this winter, improved his career best to 9.96 last season. He’ll be 39 when he starts in Doha. Jamaican colours will be represented by Nesta Carter.
Meanwhile local attention will fall on Qatari record holder Femi Ogunode, who broke the Asian record with his 9.93 victory at the Asian Games in Incheon last September. Ogunode will celebrate his 24th birthday on the day of the meet.
The Peninsula
