Allyson Felix, the world champion over 400m, steps back down to her favourite event where she will face Dafne Schippers, who took gold in the 200m at the recent IAAF World Championships, Beijing 2015.<\/p>\n
The pair clashed in Brussels last year with Felix getting the verdict with a world-leading time. This year, though, Felix hasn\u2019t been focusing on pure speed work as much, while Schippers now goes into the race as the third-fastest woman in history, having clocked 21.63 in the Chinese capital.<\/p>\n
That performance is something that Schippers took a while to come to terms with.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore Beijing I didn\u2019t know I was capable of running that kind of time,\u201d Schippers said at the press conference on Thursday (10) ahead of the AG Insurance Memorial Van Damme. \u201cI surprised myself. I hoped to go under 22, which I did, but it was faster than thought.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked if she thought breaking the world record of 21.34 was a possibility, Schippers didn\u2019t rule it out.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think more about it now than I did before,\u201d said the former heptathlete. \u201cI\u2019m 23, I have plenty of time. Now I\u2019m training more for the sprints, we\u2019ll see what happens in the next few years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since winning in Beijing, Schippers has found that she is far more in demand now back home in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a crazy world now for me, it\u2019s all new,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s nice, but it takes a lot of energy. A gold medal is very important to the Netherlands. It\u2019s no longer possible to walk down the street with my dog because a lot of people come up to me. I like it, though. It\u2019s only really hectic for one month of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Schippers doesn\u2019t intend on competing in the combined events for the foreseeable future, she says she will at least continue to incorporate other events into her training with a view to competing in the long jump next year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a sprinter now, but you need to have a little bit of fun,\u201d she said. \u201cI was used to training for all the events, so doing one other event along with the sprints is good for me.<\/p>\n
\u201cI often had injury problems with the high jump, but the long jump has always been ok for me so I think I\u2019ll compete in that event. I think seven metres is possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt a championships, doing both sprints and the long jump and the relay would be too much, though, so I\u2019ll always just focus on the 100m and the 200m.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schippers plans on doubling up in the sprints for next year\u2019s Olympic Games in Rio, but would likely only contest one of those events at the European Championships on home soil in Amsterdam. Before that, she is also targeting the IAAF World Indoor Championships in Portland.<\/p>\n
But for now, her main aim is to finish the season on a high in Brussels.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s always nice to compete against the top girls,\u201d she said. \u201cFor me, Beijing was the most important competition of the year, so now\u2019s the time to just have some fun. I\u2019m tired \u2013 we\u2019re all tired \u2013 but I still want to win, though. We all want to win; as an athlete, that\u2019s normal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Felix\u2019s last 200m race was in Lausanne where she beat Schippers in 22.09, but she knows that recapturing that kind of speed at this point of the season \u2013 in a year when the 400m has been her focus \u2013 will be difficult.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn terms of speed, I am probably not as sharp now as I would like to be,\u201d she said. \u201cBut it\u2019s exciting to see new talents coming up in the event and I love new challenges.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 200m was an impressive race in Beijing, they ran very fast,\u201d added Felix of the final in which three women ran faster than 22 seconds, two of whom bettered Felix\u2019s PB. \u201cIt was hard not to be a part of that because races like that don\u2019t come often on your way.<\/p>\n
Felix will turn 30 later this year, but coming off a season in which she ran a lifetime best of 49.26 for 400m and a 47.72 relay split, the US sprinter has no intentions of hanging up her spikes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not thinking about retirement,\u201d she said. \u201cAs long as I’m able to compete at the top level, I will continue in this sport and keep focusing on the next competition. But after Rio I will see how my body feels and how the motivation is going.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe main reason why I\u2019ve been in this business for such a long time is that I\u2019m a fierce competitor," she added. "I love to compete and I love to take on new challenges. And I love athletics.\u201d<\/p>\n
48 Beijing medallists in Brussels<\/b><\/p>\n
Meeting director Wilfred Meert and assistant director Cedric van Branteghem also spoke to the press, providing background information behind each of the 16 Diamond Race finals being contested in Brussels.<\/p>\n
No fewer than 48 medallists from the recent IAAF World Championships will be in action in Brussels, two of whom will be in the women\u2019s mile.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an event with a story,\u201d Meert said of the mile. \u201cWhen we were in Beijing, Genzebe Dibaba\u2019s coach asked me if I could change the 1500m to a mile because she wanted to break the world record (4:12.56), so we changed it.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut then after the 5000m in Beijing and her run in Zurich, she felt fatigued and so cancelled her participation in Brussels. We considered changing it back to a 1500m, but Jos Hermens, Sifan Hassan\u2019s manager, asked us to keep it as a mile because Hassan felt capable of breaking the world record.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur only problem then was finding pace makers. Chanelle Price, who paced Dibaba for the first two laps when she broke the 1500m world record in Monaco, is going to do the same here. After that, it will be up to Hassan, but she won\u2019t be alone because Jenny Simpson and Shannon Rowbury want to chase the American record (4:16.71).\u201d<\/p>\n
Meert went on to explain that the likes of USA\u2019s Justin Gatlin in the 100m, Galen Rupp in the 5000m and Belgium\u2019s Pieter-Jan Hannes in the 1500m are all targeting national records on Friday.<\/p>\n
Other athletes, meanwhile, still want to channel their frustrations from Beijing into producing a satisfying end-of-season performance.<\/p>\n
Pole vaulter Renaud Lavillenie is one such athlete. \u201cHe feels obliged to jump high after his performances in Beijing and Berlin,\u201d said Meert. \u201cAnd Habiba Ghribi is still mad about losing the steeplechase in Beijing. She is in very good shape and is aiming for the world lead.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving seven world leads at this meeting last year was like a miracle,\u201d added Meert. \u201cI don\u2019t know if we\u2019ll see another miracle like that, but I\u2019m hoping for three or four world leads.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year most of the Diamond Races had been decided before the competition. But this year it really is a fight to the finish in almost every event.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
Jon Mulkeen for the IAAF and the IAAF Diamond League<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One event at tomorrow\u2019s IAAF Diamond League final in Brussels will boast two reigning world...","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":864,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"city":[],"class_list":["post-863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=863"},{"taxonomy":"city","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/city?post=863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}