On 15 March 2015, world pole vault record holder Renaud Lavillenie launches his campaign for the 2015 season at the Diamond League’s Doha 2015 meeting on Friday 15 May, one of four prominent Olympic champions whose names the organising committee announced today to compete in the fourteenth stage of the circuit.
There is currently no bigger name in the men’s arena than Lavillenie, who has won the Diamond Race award in the competition’s first five seasons. The 28-year-old Frenchman, who set the world record of 6.16 m in Donetsk, Ukraine, in February 2014, said: “I am really looking forward to competing in Doha. The atmosphere at the Qatar Sports Club could be very conducive to winning and breaking the meeting record.” Lavillenie has cleared or exceeded six metres in five of the nine indoor meetings he has contested this year, crowning that run with 6.04 m in Prague last week to win his fourth consecutive European indoor title. As one of the sport’s most prominent athletes, Lavillenie has won thirty-three of the thirty-four competitions he has contested since the 2013 World Championships in Moscow, where Germany’s Raphael Holzdeppe pushed him into second place.
The German – also a bronze medallist at the Olympics and the European Championships – will also be in the field. The 25-year-old has reached 5.91 m twice, most recently in Rome in 2013.
The competition will also feature Greece’s Konstantinos Filippidis, the 2014 world indoor champion, who vaulted to a Doha meeting record of 5.82 m in 2013 – a local record. This year he has achieved his season’s best indoor mark of 5.75 m, finishing fifth in the European rankings.
Commenting on this, Major General Dahlan Al Hamad, president of the Qatar Athletics Federation, said: “We have proven on various occasions that we have the experience and knowledge to fulfil the promises we make to ourselves, and we have all the capabilities that qualify us to be the IAAF’s key and trusted partner, especially as we have had the honour of organising the 2019 World Championships.”
