Lavillenie challenges Bubka
Doha - In its first year as a Diamond League event, in 2010, the Doha Grand Prix entertained seven new meeting records. If the wind had blown in legal speed, these records could have been eight with the addition of Asafa Powell’s effort in the 100m.
The 2010 event program didn’t include men’s pole vault, thus the second oldest meeting record remained intact. The record still belongs to one of the greatest track and field athletes the world has ever seen, the legendary Sergey Bubka and it was set in 1998 one year after the Ukrainian’s last World title.
Current IAAF vice president and member of IOC, Bubka may still own the pole vault best ever marks both indoors (6.15) and outdoors (6.14), but the meeting records he once possessed have started to fade away.
Out of the 14 Samsung Diamond League meetings included in the 2011 circuit the 1998 Olympic Champion still owns only four records; in Doha, Rome, Paris and Brussels (co-holder) with his Qatar heroics being the most recent and the easiest to be erased from the records books.
The presence of newly crowned European Indoor Champion Renaud Lavillenie at the 2011 SDL in Doha will surely set the 5.80 Bubka’s meeting record under serious threat. The Frenchman who combined his winter victory in Paris with a 6.03 leap, which put him third at the all time list, recently stated that Bubka’s world records are not beyond reach and in Doha he will have the chance to unleash the first wave of his attack.
Thompson, Jackson and Reese flirting with the record
Although in this year’s edition the 100m dash is not included in the Diamond League race program in Doha, Olympic silver medalist Richard Thompson will take his place on the starting blocks. The second fastest man behind Usain Bolt at the 2008 Olympic Games will seek for an improvement of his personal best, 9.89, which was set in Bird’s Nest in 2008.
For US 400m hurdler Bershawn Jackson the meeting record (48.29 by Samuel Matete - 1999) looks pretty close. The 2005 World Champion is the second fastest athlete of all time and only one of the three hurdlers in the history of the event who have run at least two races under 47.35, along with Edwin Moses and Kevin Young.
Former basketball player Brittney Reese is leading women’s long jump roster and will surely aim for her first jump beyond 7 metres in Doha, after a 6.99 effort in 1999. The third all time ranked US long jumper has already bumped up in this year’s No 1 spot after a 6.83 jump in Walnut California on April 16.
