Previews28 May 2009


Gay and Powell want your attention in New York - PREVIEW

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Tyson Gay wins the US Olympic Trials in 9.68 sec WINDY (© Getty Images)

Tyson Gay, the 2007 World champion at 100m and 200m, and Asafa Powell, the former  World 100m record holder would like a moment of your attention. Actually, they wouldn't mind about thirty seconds of your attention, and if they could get it on Saturday evening (30 May) at Icahn Stadium in New York City, that would be even better.

The Reebok Grand Prix is a Grand Prix status meet as part of the IAAF World Athletics Tour 2009.

At this meeting last year, Usain Bolt made off with Powell's World record and left Gay struggling in his wake. And Powell and Gay hope to remind you that there are world-class sprinters who aren't Bolt or if things go well, to remind you that Bolt got where he is by training to beat them.

Powell and Gay won't be racing each other, though that match-up would have brought both a nice payday a year ago. Instead, Gay will be running 200m and Powell 100m.

Powell's position as favourite in the men's 100m will be challenged by two Americans, Darvis Patton and Travis Padgett, and the fastest man so far in 2009 at 9.99, Daniel Bailey of Antigua and Barbuda. Bailey is unlikely to hold on to that status past Saturday evening, however, as the Powell, Padgett and Patton were three of the five fastest 100m runners of 2008, with the other two being named Bolt and Gay.

Campbell-Brown joins the Jamaican ‘home meet’

Over the last few years, the Jamaican crowd travelling to the stadium on Randall's Island in New York City's East River has grown so large that Jamaican stars like Powell can feel like they're running a home meet. Veronica Campbell-Brown, like Gay a World 100m champion from 2007 and the Beijing gold medallist at 200m, might join a push to change the flag on the World Athletics Tour schedule from red, white and blue to green, black and yellow.

Campbell-Brown, who won and set a meet record of 10.91 here last year, will be paired with the woman who pushed her to the line in Osaka, Lauryn Williams. Torri Edwards and Muna Lee, respectively the fastest and fourth-fastest women of 2008 (both faster than Campbell-Brown) are also in the field.

Chasing fast times in the fives

There's nothing like a fast track to bring top athletes to a meet, and Bolt's mark wasn't the first time a World record time was run in this event. In 2006, Meseret Defar ran 14:24.53 for 5000m here, then a World record and still the U.S. All-Comers record. This year it is Tirunesh Dibaba, Defar's rival and the current holder of the 5000m record at 14:11.15 (not to mention two gold medals from Beijing, at 5000m and 10,000m) who will be lining up with hopes of a fast start to her season. Dibaba will be joined by her younger sister Genzebe, the 2008 and 2009 World Junior Cross Country champion, but also by New Zealander Kim Smith, who ran 14:45.93 behind Dibaba in Rome last year.

The men's 5000m is being set up to lower the U.S. All-Comers record under 13:00. The current meet record of 13:04.05 was run by Tariku Bekele in 2007. Of the announced entrants, Micah Kogo had the fastest performance in 2008, running 13:03.71; Kogo was the Olympic bronze medallist at 10,000m.

But the attention so far is focused on double 2007 World champion Bernard Lagat. Hobbled by injury in Beijing, Lagat has a free pass to defend in both the 1500m and 5000m in Berlin and, after a 3:36.38 opener in the shorter race last weekend in California, Lagat will shake off the rust in the longer event in New York. While wisely stopping short of making actual predictions, Lagat has never made a secret of his desire to lower Bob Kennedy's 12:58.21 American record, and grabbing the all-comers mark at the same time would be icing on the cake.

Like Kogo a longer-distance specialist in 2008, the spoiler in the 5000m might be Ethiopia's newly-minted World Cross Country champion, Gebre Gebremariam.

Shaking up the long sprints

Jamaica may dominate the 100m start lists, but it's American long sprinters who provide the sparkle in the men's 200m and 400m. Tyson Gay headlines the 200m, where he was World champion in 2007, and he'll be facing Xavier Carter, with a 19.63 PB, and Wallace Spearmon, Gay's former teammate at the University of Arkansas and a 19.65 sprinter himself.

Also in the 200m is 400m Olympic silver medallist and 2005 and 2007 World champion Jeremy Wariner, trading places with the current 200m world leader, Lashawn Merritt. Merritt, of course, is the Olympic gold medallist (and also the current world leader) in the longer event, and he will be racing Kerron Clement, the indoor World record holder at 400m and the reigning World champion in the 400m hurdles.

Stuczynski and Klüft lead the field fields

There will be no men's field events in New York this year, but the quality of the women's events should help compensate. Jen Stuczynski, second in pretty much any listing that matters in the women's Pole Vault (except this year's performance list, which Yelena Isinbayeva has not yet entered), is returning to the event where she vaulted 4.88m in 2007. She'll be joined by China's Shuying Gao, the Asian record holder from that same competition, and Chelsea Johnson, a 4.73m vaulter last year and the second-best so far this year.

Carolina Klüft will make her first appearance at the Reebok Grand Prix in the women's Long Jump. Klüft, who contested the Long and Triple jumps in Beijing (she was 9th in the former, jumping 6.49m), sat out the Heptathlon last year after an unbroken string of three World Championships and one Olympic title (in 2004). A stress fracture sidelined her in November of 2008, keeping her out of the indoor season, and New York will be her first competition of 2009.

Grace Upshaw at 6.80m has the best mark so far this year among the other women entered, and at 6.88m she was a centimetre better than Klüft in 2008.

Parker Morse for the IAAF

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