Fierce 100m Fights in Prospect in Madrid, Home Star Bieta Set to Shine

Published by IAAF on July 9, 2015

Both 100m events should provide the main highlights on Saturday (11) at the Meeting de Madrid, an IAAF World Challenge event and Spain’s most prestigious track and field competition.

The women’s short sprint promises to be a close battle between Jamaica’s Elaine Thompson and USA’s English Gardner. They already offered a magnificent spectacle at the IAAF Diamond League meeting in Eugene at the end of May when both were credited with PBs of 10.84 with the victory going to Gardner by centimetres.

More recently, 23-year-old Gardner took silver at the US Championships after lowering her PB to 10.79 while the in-form Thompson is fresh from a comfortable 11.11 win in Lignano on Tuesday. Watch out too for Barbara Pierre as the US sprinter has won in Madrid in the past two years and will be fired up after failing to make the final at the US Championships.

The men’s side features no fewer than four athletes who have ran faster than 10 seconds this season, headed by USA’s 30-year-old Michael Rodgers, who has a season’s best of 9.90 and finished third at the US Championships in Eugene. He will line up alongside compatriots Clayton Vaughn and Diondre Batson, both of whom have run faster than 9.95 this year.