With just four weeks to go until the 2015 edition of the Weltklasse Zürich, the first of this year's IAAF Diamond League finals, the meeting organisers were able to announce sparkling entry lists for another three events on Thursday (6).
Following the conclusion of their national championships on Wednesday (5), Russia has selected a team of 71 athletes for the IAAF World Championships, Beijing 2015.
Mutaz Essa Barshim will return to the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene on 30 May, an IAAF Diamond League meeting, where he set the high jumping world on fire in 2013.
The men’s high jump should be one of the most eagerly anticipated events at this year’s ExxonMobil Bislett Games, with the IAAF Diamond League meeting welcoming Mutaz Essa Barshim to Oslo for the first time on 11 June.
Mutaz Essa Barshim improved his own Asian record by two centimetres to 2.40m at the Banskobystrická latka 2015 high jump competition in the Slovakian town of Banska Bystrica on Wednesday (4).
World indoor champion Mutaz Essa Barshim and Olympic champion Ivan Ukhov hope to continue where they left off when the pair of high jumpers clash at the Malmo Games on 25 February.
The men’s high jump had been billed as one of the focal points of this weekend in Marrakech and it certainly proved to be the top field event on Saturday.
Olympic champion Krisztian Pars will be the star attraction at the Istvan Gyulai Memorial meeting in Szekesfehervar, just outside Budapest, for the latest stop of the 2014 IAAF Hammer Throw Challenge on Tuesday (8).
For the third time this year, world high jump champion Bohdan Bondarenko will take on Olympic champion Ivan Ukhov when they compete at the Mohammed VI d'Athletisme IAAF World Challenge meeting on 8 June.
There have been nine world records in the history of the Golden Gala Pietro Mennea since the meeting came into being in 1980 and there are quiet hopes that at the fourth in the 2014 IAAF Diamond League series such a tally will reach double figures on Thursday (5).
World records are hard to come by in athletics and elite competitors usually avoid such talk, but such has been the depth of the men’s high jump in the past two years that nobody would be surprised if Bohdan Bondarenko or Ivan Ukhov – or even perhaps Mutaz Essa Barshim or Derek Drouin – scaled 2.46m at the IAAF Diamond League meeting in Rome on Thursday (5).
Any vertigo sufferers should stay away from King Baudouin Stadium on 5 September for the IAAF Diamond League meeting in Brussels, because the world’s best athletes will be reaching dizzying heights in both ends of the stadium at the 38th edition of the AG Insurance Memorial Van Damme.