Leevan Sands of The Bahamas in flight during the men's Triple Jump qualification round (© Getty Images)
Defending Triple Jump champion Nelson Evora has been talking about approaching the 18-metre mark. If tonight's qualifying round was anything to go by, it might not be such a fanciful notion after all.
The Portugese Olympic champion flew out to a first-round leap of 17.44m to make easy work of the 17.15m automatic qualification mark. Now he is safely through, Evora will go into Tuesday's final as the favourite.
Olympic silver medallist Phillips Idowu was the next man to secure a place in the final. The World indoor champion opened with 17.10m, then improved to 17.32m in round two.
China's Li Yanxi was the third to surpass the auto mark with a jump of 17.27m. However, in Beijing last year she jumped 17.30m in qualifying and could manage only 16.77 in the final, so whether he will be a factor in Tuesday's final is yet to be seen.
The standard of qualifying didn't quite match that of Beijing, where 17.06m was not good enough to progress. And for much of the second and third rounds, the positions stayed the same.
But the competition came alive again in the final round as Olympic bronze medallist Leevan Sands and Cuba's David Giralt leapt 17.20m and 17.15m respectively to round out the automatic qualifiers.
World junior champion Teddy Tamgho (17.11m) and Jadel Gregorio (17.06m) did enough to qualify. Nathan Douglas, Igor Spasovkhodskiy and Momchil Karailiev were the only other men over 17 metres, finding it ample distance to make the final.
Alexis Copello - who jumped 16.99m - will join team-mate Giralt in the final, but Cuba's attempt to get their three 17.60m+ men into the final fell short as Yoandri Betanzos ranked 17th overall with 16.77m.
Slovakia's Dmitriy Valukevic was the last qualifier with his 16.96m jump, squeezing out Olympic finalist Larry Achike (16.94m).
But with the top four from Beijing - Evora, Idowu, Sands and Giralt - all through, we may be treated to a re-run of last year's Olympic final. Will Evora come out on top again?
Jon Mulkeen for the IAAF
