Lavillenie enters the grand stage
Renaud Lavillenie, set to be one of the stars at these European Athletics Championships, will make his first appearance in the Letzigrund Stadium on Thursday morning - and it will surely not be his last.
The French pole vault world record-holder should have no trouble reaching the qualifying mark of 5.65m ahead of Saturday's final, while in the evening, the gold medal will be decided in the women's event where Germany's Lisa Ryzih and Ekaterini Stefanidi, of Greece, who have both cleared 4.71m this year, lead the way.
The women's heptathlon also begins on Thursday and it is wide open in the absence of Great Britain's injured European No. 1 Katarina Johnson-Thompson and Dafne Schippers, of the Netherlands, who will instead start her bid for a sensational sprint double in the heats of the 200m.Can she now add this gold - the final is on Friday - to the 100m title she won in such blistering style on Wednesday night?
The women's 20km walk, at 9.10 a.m. in the centre of the city, is the first of six finals on Thursday with the last, the 110m hurdles at 9.50 p.m., expected to be one of the races of the week - if not the race of the week.Barring no disasters in the semifinals earlier in the night, it should be a clash between Europe's top three men: France's Pascal Martinot-Lagarde, Sergey Shubenkov, the defending champion from Russia, and Britain's Will Sharman.
Medals will also be up for grabs in the finals of the men's 3000m steeplechase, the men's triple jump and the women's javelin. One to watch
Barbora Spotakova will be chasing her first European title. The Czech Republic's javelin world record-holder and double Olympic champion missed last summer as she had a baby but now she is back and looks to follow 10,000m gold medallist Jo Pavey as a mother with a gold medal from these European Athletics Championships.
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