Sifan Hassan and Faith Kipyegon in the 1500m at the Wanda Diamond League meeting in Florence (© Matt Quine)
The first big athletics confluence following the Tokyo 2020 Games will occur over two days in Eugene, Oregon, starting with tomorrow (Friday) night’s women’s 5000m world record attempt by Sifan Hassan and concluding on Saturday evening with a re-match between the Olympic men’s 1500m gold and silver medallists, Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Timothy Cheruiyot.
As for the events in between, they are similarly rich in quality, with three of the five home individual Olympic champions - women’s 800m winner Athing Mu, pole vaulter Katie Nageotte and shot putter Ryan Crouser - being on show.
But perhaps the principal point of interest in Saturday’s Wanda Diamond League action will be the women’s 100m
This will see Sha’Carri Richardson, whose one-month ban after a positive test for cannabis during the US Olympic Trials precluded her running the individual event in Tokyo, measuring her talents against the three Jamaicans who claimed the Tokyo medals.
Richardson, 21, stands third in this season’s world lists with 10.72, and ran a wind-aided 10.64 at the trials.
She will be taking on Elaine Thompson-Herah, who retained her title in Tokyo in 10.61 – putting her second on the all-time list behind Richardson’s idol and compatriot Florence Joyner-Griffith, whose world record of 10.49 has stood since 1988.
She will be taking on the Tokyo silver medallist and 2008 and 2012 champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, now 34, who has clocked 10.63 this year.
And she will be taking on Shericka Jackson, who clocked a personal best of 10.76 in winning Tokyo bronze.
Add into that mix three other Tokyo finalists – fourth-placed Marie-Josee Ta Lou of the Ivory Coast, Switzerland’s Mujinga Kambundji and a second US runner Teahna Daniels. Light the blue touch paper. Stand well back…
Richardson is also down to run the following event, the women’s 200m, and should she take that opportunity up she would find herself racing against another athlete with something to prove in the form of world champion Dina Asher-Smith.
The Briton, who appeared in Tokyo after recovering from what she revealed had been a serious hamstring injury, pulled out of the 200m after narrowly failing to reach the 100m final, but returned to help her country earn bronze in the 4x100m relay.
Ta Lou, fifth in the Tokyo final, and 35-year-old home favourite Allyson Felix, who won the Olympic 200m title at the London 2012 Games, are also in the field.
The focus of attention tomorrow evening will undoubtedly be on Hassan, the phenomenal Dutch runner who fell marginally short of a Tokyo treble earlier this month as she earned the 5000m and 10,000m titles and took bronze in the 1500m.
With characteristic insouciance, Hassan announced on her Instagram feed that she will use the Eugene meeting to attack the world 5000m record of 14:06.62 set by Ethiopia’s Letesenbet Gidey in Valencia last year.
That would represent a substantial improvement for Hassan, who set the European record of 14:22.12 in London two years ago, but after her Tokyo exploits you would not bet against her managing it.
In June this year Gidey ran 29:01.03 to eclipse Hassan’s world 10,000m record of 29:06.82 set on the same Hengelo track just two days earlier.
Hassan’s response in Tokyo was impressive as she beat the Ethiopian to the Olympic 10,000m title with a final, unanswerable sprint around the final bend. Depriving her rival of one of her world records would mark another strong statement.
But she will have a proper race on her hands given the presence of runners such as Ethiopia’s Fantu Worku, who has run 14:26.80 this season, and Kenya’s world 3000m steeplechase champion and record-holder, Beatrice Chepkoech, who has a best of 14:34.55.
Gidey, meanwhile, is down to race in the earlier two-miles race that will also feature Kenya’s double world 5000m champion and Tokyo 2020 silver medallist, Hellen Obiri, and Burundi’s Rio 2016 800m silver medallist Francine Niyonsaba.
The self-styled Distance Night in Eugene, which will also feature an international mile, will be followed on Saturday evening by a programme that will serve as a welcome-home to three Tokyo conquerors.
Mu, 19, who wowed the US trials before following through to win 800m gold in a United States record of 1:55.21, faces the two women who followed her home in Tokyo – Britain’s 19-year-old Keely Hodgkinson, who broke Kelly Holmes’ longstanding national record in clocking 1:55.88, and fellow American Raevyn Rogers.
Britain’s fourth-placed Jemma Reekie is also in the field, as is Uganda’s 2019 world champion Halimah Nakaayi and another home runner, double world bronze medallist Ajee Wilson.
Among the field event highlights will be the men’s shot put, where Ryan Crouser looks likely to produce another demonstration of his untouchable form having followed up his world record of 23.37m set at the US Trials with an imperious retention of his Olympic title, setting an Olympic record of 23.30m and recording the five best throws of the competition.
The man who registered the sixth best of 22.65m, thus winning silver, was Crouser’s fellow American Joe Kovacs, who beat him to the world title in Doha by a single centimetre.
Kovacs is also in the field, as is New Zealand’s 2017 world champion Tom Walsh, who took bronze in Doha on countback behind Crouser and also earned bronze in Tokyo.
Hayward Field, now in its full re-built glory in anticipation of hosting the postponed World Athletics Championships next year, will also welcome another field event Olympic champion in the form of pole vaulter Katie Nageotte.
Her rivals will include Britain’s Tokyo bronze medallist Holly Bradshaw and the Rio 2016 Olympic champion Katerina Stefanidi of Greece.
Ingebrigtsen, who set an Olympic record of 3:28.32 in beating Kenya’s world champion Cheruiyot to Tokyo gold – thus earning a first win over his rival at the 13th attempt – will be seeking a second successive victory over his main rival in the concluding Bowerman Mile.
Also in the field will be two other Tokyo finalists in Britain’s Jake Heyward and Ollie Hoare of Australia, plus Ingebrigtsen’s elder brother Filip, the European 2016 1500m champion, and Uganda’s Ronald Musagala.
Home eyes, however, will be on Matt Centrowitz, the Rio 2016 1500m champion, who missed qualifying for the Tokyo final by a couple of places despite running a season’s best of 3:33.69.
The women’s equivalent race, over 1500m, looks equally tasty.
Kenya’s Faith Kipyegon, who retained her 1500m title in Tokyo, will headline a race including Britain’s silver medallist Laura Muir, Canada’s fifth-placed Gabriela DeBues-Stafford and Australia’s sixth-placed Linden Hall.
While the world champion may not be in the women’s 3000m steeplechase field, the Olympic champion – Uganda’s Peruth Chemutai – will be, as will home runner Courtney Frerichs, the Tokyo silver medallist, and Kenya’s highly talented Norah Jeruto, who has a best of 8:59.62, and Celliphine Chespol, who has clocked 8:58.78, the only runners present to have bettered nine minutes.
Saturday’s programme also contains a mouth-watering men’s 100m event involving four of the Tokyo finalists, including US sprinter Fred Kerley, the home silver medallist.
Kerley, the 2019 world 400m bronze medallist with a best time of 43.64, has concentrated to good effect on the shorter sprint this season and will be favourite in a field that also contains Canada’s bronze medallist – and 200m Olympic gold medallist – Andre De Grasse, along with two other Tokyo finalists in fourth-placed Akani Simbine of South Africa and his fellow American Ronnie Baker, who was fifth.
The men’s 800m will feature the Tokyo gold and silver medallists, Kenya’s Emmanuel Korir and Ferguson Rotich, as well as home finallist Clayton Murphy and Britain’s Elliot Giles.
Tokyo gold and bronze medallists will be in evidence in the men’s triple jump, where Portugal’s champion Pedro Pablo Pichardo and Hugues Fabrice Zango will be in the field along with home jumper Will Claye, who was fourth.
The men’s 200m will include home sprinters Noah Lyles and Kenny Bednarek, the respective Olympic silver and bronze medallists, along with the Olympic 400m hurdles silver medallist Rai Benjamin.
In the women’s 400m hurdles another United States Tokyo silver medallist, world champion Dalilah Muhammad, will return to action having lost a monumental struggle with compatriot Sydney McLaughlin in Tokyo that saw both runners finish inside the previous world record.
The field also includes Tokyo finalist Anna Ryzhykova and fellow American Shamier Little, who recovered from her failure to qualify at the US trials by posting a series of top quality performances on the circuit, setting a PB of 52.39 last month.
The stellar cast list goes on in the men’s two miles, which will feature Ethiopia’s Olympic 10,000m champion Selemon Barega, Paul Chelimo of the United States, the Olympic 5000m bronze medallist, and Uganda’s Olympic 10,000m bronze medallist Jacob Kiplimo.
The women’s high jump will offer Vashti Cunningham, who finished equal sixth in the Tokyo 2020 final, another chance to shine against a field including three other Olympic finalists in Ukraine’s fourth-placed Iryna Gerashenko, her compatriot Yuliya Levchenko and Poland’s Kamila Licwinko.
Also featuring will be Belgium’s Nafissatou Thiam, who retained her heptathlon title in Tokyo and has a high jump best of 2.02m.
Mike Rowbottom for World Athletics
