Young guns get shot at Greene
By Tom Knight (Filed: 04/07/2003)
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The Stade de France is set for a mini-dress rehearsal for the World
Championships tonight when Paris hosts the second of this summer’s Golden
League meetings.
Top of the bill will be the 100 metres, where Britain’s Dwain Chambers and
Mark Lewis-Francis take on the former world record holder, Maurice Greene,
and the in-form Nigerian, Deji Aliu.
It is very much a contest between the man who holds the world title and the
young guns who will want it for themselves in seven weeks’ time.
Greene came out this year vowing to make amends for a terrible 2002 and an
early 9.94sec time suggested the 28-year-old was not ready to give up his
crown just yet.
In his first race in Europe this season, however, the American was upstaged
in Lausanne on Tuesday by Aliu and his compatriot, Bernard Williams.
Lewis-Francis will be hoping that the lethargy that struck him in Glasgow at
the weekend will not reappear.
After his 100m victory over Chambers in Oslo, Lewis-Francis is one of 11
contenders for the International Association of Athletics Federation’s $1
million jackpot, on offer to athletes who win at all six meetings in the
series.
At just 17, Allyson Felix has been compared to Marion Jones and Europe gets
its first look at the fastest woman in the 200m this year when she clashes
with France’s Muriel Hurtis, the European champion.
The fastest-selling tickets for the World Championships, on Aug 23-31, have
been for the night when all France was expecting to see the return of
Marie-Jo Perec in the 400m.
But Perec looks unlikely to be there. The three-times Olympic champion said
yesterday that she was still suffering intense pain from sciatica and there
was only a “tiny chance” that she would compete.