Tribune News Network
Doha/Chorzow
Qatar’s high jump star Mutaz Essa Barshim will once again lock horns with his Tokyo Olympics gold medal partner Gianmarco Tamberi of Italy on Sunday at the 14th Silesia Kamila Skolimowska Memorial Diamond League to be held at the Silesian Stadium in Chorzow, Poland, on Sunday.
The athletics meeting is also a homecoming of sorts for the 32-year-old Barshim who has been guided by Polish coach Stanislaw Szczyrba all through emerging as a three-time Olympic medallist and twice a world champion.
Qatar’s ‘Golden Falcon’, Barshim was also recently named as Best Asian Athlete for the second time in a row at Asian Athletic Federation’s 50th Anniversary in Bangkok.
“Having a Polish coach, I must have done about half of the training during my career in your country. That makes me even happier to finally make it to the Memorial in Silesia. I love you, dzien dobry!,” said Barshim while addressing a press conference ahead of the meet on Saturday.
Barshim’s greeting promised a great duel against Tamberi with whom he shared the Olympic gold in Tokyo.
Barshim has competed at the Skolimowska Memorial once before, but that was while the competition still took place in Warsaw.
On his part, Tamberi said, “It’s always been a pleasure competing together. We were friends but after the Olympics we can call each other like brothers. It was just sharing the best day of our lives.
The track is amazing, the crowd is amazing, the meeting is amazing so I am looking to compete with this big high jumper (Barshim) tomorrow.”
Barshim warmed up with a 2.20m gold jump at the West Asia championships in Doha in April. The world champion with a personal best of 2.43m is also gearing up for a shot at a consecutive fourth title at the world championships in Budapest, Hungary, next month. He will also be competing at the Asian Games in Hangzhou, China, in September.
The Chorzow Diamond League therefore is an important step on the way and Barshim would definitely look to raise the bar high.
While the high jump heroes would have the spotlight for sure, there would be several other world stars aiming to corner glory as well.
The Diamond League meeting in Paris in June saw three world records being broken including in pole vault by the super Swede Armand Duplantis.
“I feel I have some unfinished business here,” Duplantis sent out a warning to his rivals again waiting for the Sunday afternoon show which begins at 2pm local time.
