Thompson among strong 100m line-up at Prefontaine
The best women’s 100m field of the season will assemble in Eugene, Oregon, today at the annual Prefontaine Classic. Standing ready will be Olympic 100 and 200m champion Elaine Thompson. The 25-year-old will face World champion Tori Bowie of the United States and the Ivory Coast pair of Murielle Ahoure and Marie Josee Talou, who went 1-2 in the 60m at the IAAF World Indoor Championships in March.
Fourth in those Championships, the Jamaican, nevertheless, will settle into her blocks with a season’s best of 10.93 seconds and a confidence boosting win at last week’s Jamaica Invitational under her belt. She won that event in 11.07 seconds.
At 10.70 seconds, she has the fastest personal best in a field that also includes two-time World 200m champion Dafne Schippers of the Netherlands, 2014 Commonwealth 100 and 200m winner Blessing Okagbare and Dina AsherSmith of Britain, the World Under-20 100m champion on Eugene’s Franklin Field track four years ago.
COMPETITIVE 400M
Asher-Smith held off Thompson’s fast finish to secure third place in the 200m at last month’s Commonwealth Games.
Also present will be Jamaica’s Olympic and World 110m hurdles champion Omar McLeod. He and Ronald Levy, the freshly minted Commonwealth champion, will see action in the 110m hurdles. Among their rivals is Spain’s Orlando Ortega, runner-up to McLeod in the Olympics, World Indoor 60m winner Andrew Pozzi of Britain, and the men who preceded McLeod as World champion and Olympic champion, Sergey Shubenkov of Russia and American Aries Merritt, respectively, who holds the world record with his clocking of 12.80 seconds, set at the Memorial Van Damme meet on September 7, 2012 in Belgium.
Thompson’s MVP Track Club teammates Stephennie McPherson and Janieve Russell will race in highly competitive 400m and 400m hurdles races, respectively. McPherson will have the Bahamian Olympic 400m champion Shaunae Miller-Uibo and World champion Phyllis Francis of the USA to contend with.
The Eugene meet is part of the 2018 IAAF Diamond League series and follows meets in Doha and Shanghai.