James Beckford in action in the men's long jump (© Getty Images)
Top sprinter Aziz Zakari and world long jump silver medallist James Beckford have been lined up to compete at the 17th Intersport Gugl-Meeting in Linz on Monday 2 August.
Ghana’s Abdul Aziz Zakari who won the 100m at the TDK Golden League in Rome (10.10 - 2 July) will race in Linz, the meeting in which in 2001 he set a personal best of 10.04 seconds. In Rome he left the current World champion Kim Collins (SKN) trailing.
Jamaican James Beckford, who has a summer season’s best of 8.23 (3 July) and a personal best of 8.62 (1997) goes in the men's Long Jump, an event at which he is currently ranked number 5 in the IAAF World Rankings.
In the opening meeting of the Intersport Arena he managed 8.11m and “on 2 August I want to exceed this length in the open-air stadium,” confirmed Beckford.
The sandpit in Linz has witnessed some outstanding jumps in the past:
1995: Ivan Pedroso 8.66m (Gugl-Record)
1994: Kareem Streete-Thompson 8.63m
1997: Ivan Pedroso 8.56m
2002: Dwight Phillips 8.38m
