High jumper Alessia Trost will be the leading medal hope for an Italian team 35 athletes at next month’s Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

One year after breaking the Nagoya Marathon course record, Bahrain’s Eunice Kirwa will return to the IAAF Gold Label Road Race on 13 March.

Ireland’s leading distance runner Fionnuala Britton will be looking to make it third-time lucky at the SPAR Great Ireland Run 10km, an IAAF Silver Label Road Race in Dublin’s Phoenix Park on Saturday (11).

Italy’s Valeria Straneo won the silver medal in the marathon at last year’s IAAF World Championships in Moscow. This week she will be aiming to go one better at the European Championships in Zurich. Here she offers her take on the IAAF’s work, rest and play questions.

The summer track season might now be in full bloom but a head-to-head between the 5000m and 10,000m World record holder Kenenisa Bekele and World marathon record holder Wilson Kipsang keeps some of the spotlight on the roads at the Bupa Great Manchester Run, an IAAF Gold Label Road Race, on Sunday (18).

Zersenay Tadese will set out on the streets of Copenhagen in tomorrow’s IAAF/AL-Bank World Half Marathon Championships seeking to extend his unprecedented run of individual success in this event.

Organisers of the EDP Lisbon Half Marathon have made some small changes to the course, making it flatter and faster. It means the high-quality elite fields will head to the Portuguese capital for the IAAF Gold Label Road Race on Sunday (16) with high hopes of producing lifetime bests.

Valeria Straneo’s silver medal in the women’s marathon on the opening day of the IAAF World Championships in Moscow was the highlight of the Italian athletics season in 2013 and one of the biggest stories in all of Italian sport, well at least outside football, during the last year.

Valeria Straneo will finally realize a long-held dream and make her ING New York City Marathon debut on Sunday (3), something the Italian has been waiting to do for more than 12 months after Hurricane Sandy cause the cancellation of the 2012 edition of the IAAF Gold Label Road Race.

London Marathon champion Tsegaye Kebede, double New York Marathon winner Martin Lel and World silver medallist Valeria Straneo will compete in the 2013 ING New York City Marathon, an IAAF Gold Label Road Race, on 3 November.

Kenya’s Wilson Kiprop took two seconds off the course record when he clocked 1:00:18 at the Rock’n’Roll Vodafone Half Marathon of Portugal, an IAAF Gold Label Road Race, in Lisbon on Sunday (6).

Ethiopia’s Ibrahim Jeilan, the 2011 IAAF World Championships 10,000m gold medallist and silver medallist over the same distance in Moscow, will attempt his first Half Marathon when he competes at the Rock’n’Roll Vodafone Half Marathon of Portugal in Lisbon on Sunday (6).