24th May 2013

Bt Great City Games And Bupa Great Manchester Run

24 May 2013

The BT Great City Games take place tomorrow as an array of world-class athletes take to the streets of Manchester.

Olympic long jump champion Greg Rutherford (Dan Pfaff) will jump against the joint British record holder Chris Tomlinson (Rana Reider) on Sunday having already shown strong early season form.

Double European Indoor champion Perri Shakes-Drayton (Chris Zah) will compete in the rarely run 200m hurdles. Eilidh Child (Malcolm Arnold), who finished second to Shakes-Drayton over 400m at the European Indoor Championships in March, and Russian Olympic 400m hurdles champion Natalya Antyuck will also be in the field.

In the men’s equivalent, Olympic 400m hurdles champion Felix Sanchez will also step down in distance and will clash with the 400m hurdles bronze medallist from London, LJ Van Zyl of South Africa.

Europe’s fastest man, Christophe Lemaitre of France, will line up over 150m against Great Britain’s Dwain Chambers (Rana Reider) while in the women’s 150m British hopes will be led by Jodie Williams (Stanley Madiri) who will test herself against 2012 IAAF World Female Athlete of the Year Allyson Felix.

Jonnie Peacock (Steve Fudge) will compete for first time since his dramatic win in the T44 100m at the London Games as he lines up against the likes of Arnu Fourie of South Africa, who finished behind Peacock in third place in London, and the USA’s Blake Leeper, who won Paralympic T43 200m bronze and 400m silver last summer.

Alan Oliveira, who finished second to Peacock over 100m and won gold over 200m at London 2012, will compete over 200m against a field that will include Fourie competing in his second event of the day.

Paralympic T42/43/44 long jump silver medallist Stef Reid (Keith Antoine) will appear in both the long jump, against Australian Kelly Cartwright who best her to gold in London, and in the 100m against London 2012 T43 100m silver and 200m gold medallist Marlou Van Rhijn.

In the Bupa Great Manchester Run, held the following day on Sunday, double Olympic champion Haile Gebrselassie will look for his sixth victory at this event.

The Ethiopian will face a strong challenge from Kenyan Wilson Kipsang, third at the London 2012 Olympic marathon and Moses Kipsiro of Uganda who won double distance gold at the 2010 Commonwealth Games. Chris Thompson (Mark Rowland), the 2010 European 10,000m bronze medallist, is the leading British entry.

Tirunesh Dibaba, a three-time Olympic gold medallist and four time world champion, is the standout entry in the women’s elite field. 2011 Bupa Great Manchester Run winner Helen Clitheroe (John Nuttall) will be targeting her second victory here.