Double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius resumes his bid to qualify for the Olympics on Friday at a Golden Gala featuring a large cast of standouts honing their form for the Beijing Games.
Jeremy Wariner and LaShawn Merritt will clash again in the 400m, a week after Merritt stunned Olympic and two-time world champion Wariner at the US trials.
Five athletes remain in the hunt for the Golden League’s US$1 million jackpot: Bershawn Jackson (400 hurdles) and Hussein Al-Sabee (long jump) on the men’s side and Pamela Jelimo (800 meters), Josephine Onyia (100 hurdles) and Blanka Vlasic (high jump) among the women.
PHOTO: EPA
Competitors that win their event in all six Golden League meets will share the jackpot. Rome is the third meet in the series after Berlin and Oslo, followed by Paris (July 18), Zurich (Aug. 29) and Brussels (Sept. 5).
Pistorius needs to meet an Olympic qualifying time of 45.55 seconds in the 400’s B race to make South Africa’s relay team for Beijing. Last week in Milan, in his first able-bodied race in nearly a year, he clocked 47.78.
Pistorius resumed training only seven weeks ago when the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled that he was eligible to run in Beijing.
He’d spent most of this year fighting his case in legal circles, which had affected his form — but he expects improvement from his performance in Milan.
CAS overturned a decision by the IAAF that Pistorius’ carbon fiber prosthetic racing blades gave him an unfair advantage and that he should be banned from the Olympics and any other able-bodied race.
World champion Irving Saladino is in Rome but won’t face local long jump rival Andrew Howe because the Italian is injured. Salim Sdiri, the Frenchman who was pierced in his side by a wayward javelin during last year’s meet, is entered.
Tero Pitkamaki, the Finn who threw the javelin that hit Sdiri, is also back, although the javelin competition has been moved up to the start of the meet so as not to risk any interference with the long jump.
Former world record-holder Asafa Powell will run the 100 meters, and will want to show he’s fully recovered from a chest injury that kept him out for a large chunk of the season.
Powell’s fellow Jamaican Usain Bolt set a world record of 9.72 seconds in New York on May 31.
While Bolt isn’t in Rome, there is a quality field including Derrick Atkins of the Bahamas, the silver medalist at last year’s worlds, and Trinidad’s Darrel Brown, the world junior record-holder.
The large number of top participants has forced organizers to include two semifinals into the program before the final sprint at 9:15pm.
Other standouts include two of this season’s world record-breakers: Dayron Robles in the men’s 110 hurdles and Tirunesh Dibaba in the women’s 5,000.
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