World 60 meter indoor record holder Christian Coleman will make his debut on the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Indoor Tour Saturday as it reaches the Reggie Lewis Center in American city Boston.
The 21-year-old world 100 meter silver medalist, who recorded a time of 6.37 seconds at the Clemson Invitational meeting in South Carolina on January 19, takes on a field that includes another super-talented US sprinter in Noah Lyles, the IAAF Diamond League 200 meter champion.
Lyles ran 6.57 seconds last week in New York, as did China’s Xie Zhenye, who is also in the field along with Britain’s former world junior champion Harry Aikines-Aryeetey.
The women’s 60 meter hurdles is also stacked with talent in the form of the two fastest women so far this year, home athletes Christina Manning and Sharika Nelvis, and fellow US athletes Jasmin Stowers and Queen Harrison.
The women’s 400 meters will feature three-time world indoor 4x400m champion Natasha Hastings, but also 2015 world 400m hurdles silver medalist Shamier Little, who has run 52.84 this season without barriers in her way.
The event will conclude with a men’s 3,000m featuring two past winners at this meeting – Dejen Gebremeskel, who beat Britain’s Mo Farah at the same distance in 2011 despite losing a shoe early in the race, and fellow Ethiopian Hagos Gebrehiwet, who beat Gebremeskel in 2013 and set a still-standing world under-20 indoor record of 7:32.87.
The women’s 3,000m is not a World Indoor Tour scoring event but will feature two stellar home athletes in world steeplechase champion Emma Coburn and the 2011 world 1,500m champion Jenny Simpson, formerly a steeplechaser.
An intriguing middle-distance race is in prospect in the men’s 800m, where world indoor champion Boris Berian of the US will start putting an injury-hampered 2017 season behind him.
Berian will face a tough challenger in Donavan Brazier, whose 1:45.35 in New York put him third on the 2018 performance list and second on the North American indoor all-time list.
World indoor 1,500m silver medalist Dawit Seyaum, who won over that distance in this meeting two years ago, returns in that event to face Britain’s Hannah England and Violah Lagat of Kenya.
Bahamian record-holder Leevan Sands, Olympic finalist Troy Doris and 2014 world indoor finalist Chris Carter will contest the men’s triple jump.
By Mike Rowbottom
Republished with permission from insidethegames.biz.