Christian Taylor on his way to a meeting record in the triple jump at the Golden Spike meeting in Ostrava (© AFP / Getty Images)
Christian Taylor, Elaine Thompson and Omar McLeod are among the seven Olympic champions so far confirmed for the Nanjing World Challenge on 21 May.
Nanjing, the host city of the 2020 IAAF World Indoor Championships, is one of the newest venues on the IAAF World Challenge circuit and the world’s best athletes will be keen to etch their name on the relatively new set of stadium records at the Nanjing Youth Olympic Games Sports Park.
World and Olympic champion Taylor, world ranked No.1 in the triple jump, will face arch rival Pedro Pablo Pichardo. Taylor already holds the Chinese all-comers’ record with his 18.21m leap from the IAAF World Championships Beijing 2015, a performance that moved him to second on the world all-time list.
McLeod, another world and Olympic champion, leads the men’s 110m hurdles field. The Jamaican will take on world silver medallist Sergey Shubenkov, world ranked No.1 in the 110m hurdles, as well as Olympic silver medallist Orlando Ortega, world record-holder Aries Merritt and Asian Games champion Xie Wenjun of China.
Hurdling legend Liu Xiang holds the stadium record in Nanjing with his 13.10 clocking from 2005.
In the women’s 200m, double Olympic champion Elaine Thompson will face double world silver medallist Marie-Josee Ta Lou and Blessing Okagbare.
World champion Luvo Manyonga, world ranked No.1 in the long jump, will take on Olympic champion Jeff Henderson in the men’s long jump. The event has lots of Chinese interest too as Asian Games champion Wang Jianan, Asian champion Huang Changzhou and 2015 Asian champion Gao Xinglong are all set to compete.
Other Olympic champions set to compete include Tianna Bartoletta in the women’s long jump, Brianna McNeal in the women’s 100m hurdles and Kerron Clement in the men’s 400m hurdles. Clement will take on world silver medallist Yasmani Copello and Asian Games bronze medallist Takatoshi Abe.
Organisers for the IAAF
