Eugene (United States) (AFP) – World champion Sha’carri Richardson will run her first 100m of the Olympic year on Sunday at the Eugene Diamond League, where Jakob Ingebrigtsen headlines a star-studded mile field.
Richardson, who launched her 2024 campaign with a relay in March and followed with a pair of sluggish 200m performances in China in April, returns to her signature event on the same Hayward Field track in Eugene that will host the US Olympic trials June 21-30.
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Richardson is slated to face Jamaica’s five-time Olympic gold medallist Elaine Thompson-Herah, who won 100m gold in Rio in 2016 and in Tokyo in 2021.
Since Tokyo — where she completed a 100m, 200m and 4x100m treble — the 31-year-old has endured a rollercoaster thanks in part to Achilles tendon trouble.
Last year Thompson-Herah had to make do with 4x100m relay bronze at the worlds before finishing the year on a high despite a stormy separation from her coach.
She kicks off her season in Eugene, a month before the Jamaican trials.
The women’s 100m also features world indoor 60m champion Julien Alfred of Saint Lucia and Ivorian Marie-Josee Ta Lou.
Ethiopia’s 10,000m world champion Gudaf Tsegay, who shattered the 5,000m world record at the Diamond League finals in Eugene in September, plans to take on the 10,000m world record of 29:01.03 set by her compatriot Letesenbet Gidey in June 2021.
Also world record-holder in the indoor 1,500m, Tsegay flashed impressive early season form with a 1,500m of 3:50.30 at Xiamen last month.
Both the women’s and men’s 10,000m races gain extra spice as the Olympic selection races for Kenya.
Meanwhile Eugene’s signature event, the Bowerman Mile will feature Norway’s 1,500m Olympic champion Ingebrigtsen and his British rivals Josh Kerr and Jake Wightman.
Wightman stunned Ingebrigtsen at the 2022 World Championships in Eugene and Kerr did the same last year in Budapest.
© 2024 AFP
