Lavillenie joins Bolt as Paris headliner – IAAF Diamond League

This year’s Meeting Areva will showcase some of the world’s best athletes when the IAAF Diamond League series reaches Paris on 4 July.

Joining Jamaica’s six-time Olympic gold medallist Usain Bolt, who was announced last month, are two of the biggest stars in French athletics: IAAF world athlete of the year Renaud Lavillenie and three-time European champion Mahiedine Mekhissi.

Pole vault world record-holder Lavillenie feels at home in the Stade de France, having won at the past six editions of the Meeting Areva. At this year’s edition he will face two of the most promising rising talents of the event: Canadian record-holder Shawn Barber and Polish indoor record-holder Piotr Lisek, both of whom have vaulted 5.90m or higher this winter.

Steeplechase specialist Mekhissi is another familiar face at the Meeting Areva. He won the 2011 edition – making him the only non-Kenyan man to win a steeplechase race in the history of the Diamond League – and then in 2013, he set a European record of 8:00:09 in the French capital.

The 30-year-old has not yet decided which event he will contest in Paris, but he is spoilt for choice as the meeting features both the steeplechase and the 1500m, the event in which he won the European title last summer.

Organisers 

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