Eight individual champions from the Berlin 2018 European Athletics Championships will compete at the Kamila Skolimowska Memorial Meeting in Chorzow, a European Athletics Outdoor Classic Permit Meeting, on Wednesday (22).
Wojciech Nowicki defeated world champion Pawel Fajdek for the European hammer title in Berlin. They will renew their domestic rivalry in Chorzow while Michal Haratyk and Konrad Bukowiecki - who also won gold and silver on the same night in the shot put - will come up against reigning world indoor and outdoor champion Tom Walsh from New Zealand.
Paulina Guba, who defeated Christina Schwanitz for the women’s shot put title with the penultimate throw of the contest in Berlin, will also be competing on home soil and while world record-holder Anita Wlodarczyk is absent, teammates Joanna Fiodorow and Malwina Kopron - who have both made podiums in recent global events - will be in contention for the victory in the women’s hammer.
In the men’s discus, reigning world and European champion Andrius Gudzius from Lithuania will be looking for victory in his first competition since Berlin. Like Guba, Gudzius only won the European title with his sixth throw of the final.
On the track, reigning world and European 200m champion Ramil Guliyev drops down to the 100m - a distance over which he will face Americans Ronnie Baker and Mike Rodgers who have clocked 9.88 and 9.89 respectively this season.
European 400m champion Justyna Swiety-Ersetic comes up against world and Olympic 800m champion Caster Semenya - who broke the 50 second-barrier for the first time to win at the African Championships in Asaba, Nigeria earlier this month - while European champion Elvira Herman from Belarus faces Germany’s Pamela Dutkiewicz in the 100m hurdles.
The programme concludes with the men’s 800m featuring Adam Kszczot, who became the first athlete in history to win three successive European titles at the distance. Kszczot faces teammate Marcin Lewandowski - the silver medallist over 1500m in Berlin - and reigning world champion Pierre Ambroise Bosse, who won a bronze medal behind Kszczot in the 800m.
Elsewhere, Renaud Lavillenie faces Poles Pawel Wojciechowski and Piotr Lisek in the pole vault and Germany’s Andreas Hofmann is the leading entrant in the men’s javelin.