For the next 36 hours at least all eyes will be on the track. More specifically the Manchester Regional Arena for the Muller British Championships, which kicks off this afternoon, and the King Baudouin Stadium for the AG Memorial Van Damme Diamond League meeting.
Muller British Championships
The British Championships will see close to 500 of the top British athletes competing over the next two days behind closed doors, having been rescheduled from its original June date. Although Olympic selection is no longer one of the prizes on offer for athletes there is still set to be some very entertaining and competitive racing; coverage will be live on BBC on both days.
In the Men’s 800m Jake Wightman and Daniel Rowden will be going head to head and seem to be the ones to beat. Both runners are in great form with Wightman making the step down to 800m fresh from his 3rd place in the 1500m, 3:29.47, in Monaco last month. Likewise, Rowden is in very good shape heading to Manchester following his 1:44.74 PB in the 800m in Sweden just last week.
Laura Weightman will be the lead contender in the Women’s 1500m. Weightman is in fine form after her 2nd place finish in Stockholm on the 23rd August where she ran 4:01.62. Weightman’s main competition will most likely come from Jess Judd (4:03.73 PB) and Katie Snowden (4:05.29 PB)
The recent 5km British record holder, Marc Scott, will be competing in the Men’s 5000m and is the clear favourite, but behind him there will be a few runners battling it out for the other top spots. Jonathan Davies, Tom Evans, Jack Rowe and Sol Sweeney have all run sub 14-minutes this year already over the distance; In the case of Jonathan Davies by some way and he’ll surely be eyeing one of the top 2 podium spots with a lot of confidence.
Full event schedule can be found here
AG Van Damme Memorial Brussels
Meanwhile, this evening over in Brussels the latest round of the Diamond League will take place at the AG Van Damme Memorial where the highlight will be the one-hour events for both Men’s and Women’s fields.
The special record attempt event will form something of a showpiece for the meeting with Mo Farah and his training partner Bashir Adbi facing off amongst a men’s field trying to break Gebrselassie’s 2007 21,285m record. Whilst in the Women’s event Brigid Kosgei and Sifan Hassan will be attempting to beat the current record of 18,517m.
Full event schedule can be found here.
