Organisers of the Paris international athletics meeting, the eighth stage of the Diamond League, announced that our golden world champion Mutaz Essa Barshim will once again face Ukraine’s Bohdan Bondarenko in Paris on 4 July. Barshim and Bondarenko have met face to face 13 times in the Diamond League, with Barshim leading 7 wins to 6 for the Ukrainian, and also leading 9-8 in their overall head-to-head meetings. Barshim cleared 2.43m in the Diamond League final in Brussels last September, the second-best mark of all time, while the world record is held by famous Cuban Javier Sotomayor at 2.45m, set in the Spanish city of Salamanca and standing since 1993. Bondarenko’s best personal mark, meanwhile, is 2.42m, set in New York last June, the third-best mark in the world. The two stars met last Sunday at the Shanghai meeting in China, the second stage of the Diamond League, where Barshim came out on top with 2.38m against 2.32m for the Ukrainian, who tied with China’s Guowei Zhang on the same height but claimed second place on countback.
