AFTER withdrawing from last weekend’s Birmingham Diamond League meeting, Olympic sprint double champion Elaine Thompson-Herah will take on a strong field in the women’s 100m at today’s Prefontaine Classic track meet at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon.

Thompson-Herah will be returning to the meet during which she ran a national record 10.54 seconds on August 21 last year, and while the circumstances might be a little different this time around the line-up promises a lot of fireworks on the same track that will host the World Athletics World Championships in under two months’ time.

Eight Jamaicans, including Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce who will contest the 200m, are listed to compete in the meet which started yesterday. It promises a feast for fans, with several high-profile competitions both on the track and in the field.

Last year Thompson-Herah was coming off her brilliant triple gold medal performance at the Tokyo Olympic Games and was on a roll, and while she did not travel to Birmingham, United Kingdom last week, she showed up at the National Stadium in Jamaica where she ran 10.95 seconds in the final, running three races in just under three hours.

She missed the UK meet because of a sore shoulder, she had explained, and today will face five others who were in the race last August — Olympic bronze medallist Shericka Jackson and Olympic relay gold medallist Briana Williams (both from Jamaica), Marie-Josee Ta Lou of the Ivory Cost, Swiss Indoor 60m champion Mujinga Kambundji, and American Sha’Carrie Richardson.

On paper American Twanisha Terry and Jackson are expected to give Thompson-Herah the biggest competition, but the field is deep with talented runners such as Ta Lou, Asher-Smith and Kambundji.

The women’s 200m is not part of the Diamond League series but will still provide great competition, with Americans Brittany Brown, Cambrea Sturgis and Jenna Prandini coming into the race with the best times run so far. The Bahamian Anthonique Strachan is also expected to feature.

It will be the second venture in the half-lap event this season for Fraser-Pryce, the 2013 World Champion, after she ran 22.79 seconds in Kingston in late April.

Danielle Williams will contest the 100m hurdles, which is also not part of the Diamond League schedule. She is to face a tough field including world leader Jasmine Camacho-Quinn of Puerto Rico, American Tonea Marshall, world record holder Kendra Harrison Nia Ali, and Nigerian Tobi Amusan.

Natoya Goule-Topping will hope for a better position than her third-place finish in the 800m last weekend in Birmingham, and will face Great Britain’s Keely Hodgkinson and Americans Allie Wilson, Raevyn Rogers and Sage Hurta.

Jaheel Hyde and Kemar Mowatt will line up in the men’s 400m hurdles where they will face world leader Alison Dos Santos of Brasil and Americans Quincy Hall and Kallifah Rosser.

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