Mutaz Essa Barshim, winner of the high jump at the 2014 IAAF World Indoor Championships in Sopot (© Getty Images)
Qatar’s world indoor champion and 2014 World Athlete of the Year finalist Mutaz Essa Barshim will compete in four indoor meetings next February, his programme being completed after organisers for the Moravia High Jump Tour event in Trinec, Czech Republic, announced that he will return there on 8 February.
Barshim jumped in Trinec in 2013, when he equalled the meeting record of 2.34m. However, the young Qatari has been on an upward trajectory in the past 12 months.
When winning his global indoor title in the Polish city of Sopot back in March, he set an Asian indoor record of 2.38m. In the summer he cleared 2.43m at the IAAF Diamond League final in Brussels to become second-best performer ever in the event.
Barshim has deflected discussion that he might break Javier Sotomayor’s long-standing world indoor record of 2.43m, set when the Cuban won at the 1989 IAAF World Indoor Championships in Budapest, but has said that the main target of his indoor campaign is improving his Asian mark.
In addition to Trinec, Barshim will compete at the famous Banska Bystrica indoor high jump competition with music in Slovakia on 4 February and then in the Irish town of Athlone on 18 February before bringing his 2015 indoor campaign to an expected end in Malmo, Sweden, on 25 February.
Another winner in Sopot, Russia’s Mariya Kuchina, will also make a return visit to Trinec.
Kuchina will be looking for a hat trick of victories after her previous two winning visits in 2011 and 2012. On the first occasion, she cleared 1.97m which is still the world indoor junior record.
Organisers hope that, like Barshim, Kuchina can attack the meeting record which, in the women’s case, is 2.01m.
Phil Minshull and organisers for the IAAF
