There is no doubt that the clash between world champions Almaz Ayana and Vivian Cheruiyot will be among the standout contests in the women’s programme at the 2016 Doha Diamond League meeting, the opening meeting of the fourteen (14) meeting series, which takes place on Friday the sixth (6) of this month.
Ayana, who won gold at last year’s World Championships in Beijing, and Cheruiyot, who won the 10,000m at the same championships, will face each other in the 3,000m, usually one of the strongest races at the Doha championship, the meeting that opens the Diamond League season and is considered the best one-day meeting in track and field, for the seventh year running.
Cheruiyot’s big win in Beijing was her fifth world title, for the 32-year-old Kenyan runner, whose consistent results over past seasons earned her the Diamond League trophy in 2010, 2011 and 2012.
Ayana, 24, holds the Ethiopian record in the 3,000m, with a time of 8:22.20 set last year, which places her eleventh on the all-time list for the event.
Both runners are among six world champions beginning their 2016 international campaign at Qatar SC’s stadium.
Among the other world champions is Dafne Schippers, who won the 200m world title last summer with a superb time of 21.63 seconds, taking the 23-year-old Dutch runner to third on the all-time list for the event.
Schippers also won silver in the 100m in Beijing, the event she will focus on in Doha. She has shown outstanding form since the start of the year, clocking 22.25 seconds in the 200m in Gainesville on 22 April, the fastest time in the world this season.
She will face American Tori Bowie, the 2015 world bronze medallist, and Jamaica’s Veronica Campbell, whose long list of achievements includes two Olympic titles in the 200m, in 2004 and 2008.
In the 400m hurdles, two-time world champion Zuzana Hejnová of the Czech Republic, who also won bronze four years ago, will face her Bahraini rival Kemi Adekoya, this season’s surprise package after winning the World Indoor title in the 400m.
In the triple jump, meanwhile, the competition will treat us to another fierce battle between two world champions, Kazakhstan’s Olga Rypakova, the 2012 Olympic champion, and Colombia’s Caterine Ibargüen, world champion in 2013 and 2015, who has dominated this event over the past three seasons.
Rypakova, no stranger to Doha, has gone unbeaten in seven appearances, indoor and outdoor, in the Qatari capital since 2008.
Venezuela’s Yulimar Rojas, who surprised everyone with her win at the World Indoor Championships, will also be among the competitors in this event.
Elsewhere, Germany’s Katharina Molitor, the javelin world champion, tops the entry list for that event as she looks to record her first-ever Diamond League win. She will face African record-holder (69.35m) Sunette Viljoen of South Africa, who won bronze at the last two editions of the World Championships, as well as China’s Lü 
Huihui, the silver medallist at the last World Championships.
In the 800m, athletics fans will follow a strong contest between 2013 world champion Eunice Sum of Kenya, who has won the Diamond League trophy in her event three times, and South Africa’s Caster Semenya, the 2009 world champion, who recently caused a surprise by winning three different races – 400m, 800m, 1500m – at the South African national championships.
In the field events, meanwhile, American athlete Sandi Morris leads the entrants in the pole vault. The 23-year-old, who took second place at the World Indoor Championships last March, has not tasted defeat in four indoor meetings this spring, and holds this season’s world-leading mark with a vault of 4.81m.
She will face the two strong Greeks Nikoleta Kiriakopoulou, who won bronze at the last World Championships and the 2015 Diamond League trophy in her event, and her teammate Katerina Stefanidi (4.71m personal best), who won bronze at the World Indoor Championships. Kiriakopoulou, whose personal best stands at 4.83m, won the Doha meeting two years ago.
In the women’s shot put, American Michelle Carter, who comes to the Qatari capital after winning gold at the World Indoor Championships, is the biggest favourite to win the event. Among her toughest rivals is expected to be Hungary’s Anita Márton, who won silver behind Carter at the World Championships in Portland, USA
