{"id":1486,"date":"2022-06-14T14:26:32","date_gmt":"2022-06-14T14:26:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/paris.diamondleague.com\/2022\/06\/14\/allen-takes-on-france\/"},"modified":"2022-06-14T14:26:32","modified_gmt":"2022-06-14T14:26:32","slug":"allen-takes-on-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paris.diamondleague.com\/en\/allen-takes-on-france\/","title":{"rendered":"Allen takes on France"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text-justify\"><strong>Devon Allen<\/strong>\u2019s commitment to the Wanda Diamond League Meeting de Paris is known for ages and on Sunday he was keen to stress that there was no way in the world athletics fans could miss the competition at the Charl\u00e9ty Stadium. Running a time of 12\u2019\u201984, the lad from Arizona has become the world\u2019s third fastest 110 m hurdler of all time, just four hundredths of a second shy of the world record secured by his compatriot Aries Merritt. And to think it was the first time that the athlete who bagged fourth place at the Tokyo Games (5th in Rio in 2016) had posted a sub-13\u2019\u2019 time, just when he\u2019d spent the past few months retraining for a career in American football\u2026&nbsp;<br \/> He won\u2019t be the only one in Paris to have already run a sub-13\u2019\u2019 time, since <strong>Pascal Martinot-Lagarde<\/strong> has confirmed that he\u2019ll be making his comeback in this event, after a calf injury which has given him a hellish start to the season. The world number two at the indoor championships in Belgrade has held the French record since 2014 and his time of 12\u2019\u201995 at the Monaco meeting. Though he\u2019s shifted his focus from the battle to shave a few hundredths of a second off his performance to a top-three spot on the international leader board (he already boasts twelve podium places in his massive track record), <strong>PML<\/strong> likes nothing better than major races and major challenges to raise his game even higher.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-justify\"><strong>Zhoya keen to prove himself<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"text-justify\">Having already achieved the time requirement for the world championships in Eugene, albeit with no guarantee of actually making it there given the density of French contenders in the discipline for the past two decades, <strong>Wilhem Belocian<\/strong> and <strong>Just Kwaou-Mathey<\/strong> will have a golden opportunity to improve on their personal bests: 13\u2019\u201915 for the farmer, 13\u2019\u201930 for the latter.&nbsp;<br \/> An Olympic finalist in Tokyo, Aurel Manga has not yet found the trigger to bring down his time in 2022, but he is most definitely a man who steps up to plate at major events. Indeed, with one week to go till the French Elite Championships in Angers, it\u2019s worth betting that he\u2019ll be up for the fight at the Meeting de Paris. New rising talent <strong>Sasha Zhoya<\/strong>, who racked up a promising 13\u2019\u201948 in Geneva last Saturday in what was only his second race over 106 cm hurdles, will also line up among the contenders. Up against such stiff opposition, the world U20 champion 2021 should be able to really bring his A game and will soon be setting the standards against the best athletes on the planet.&nbsp;<br \/> In addition to Allen and France\u2019s four musketeers, Polish hurdler <strong>Damian Czykier<\/strong>, Briton <strong>Andrew Pozzi<\/strong> and the young Spaniard <strong>Asier Martinez<\/strong> will act as referees at the start of the qualifying heats, which are due to get underway from 20:11 hrs. The final bid for the title is scheduled to play out down the main straight at Charl\u00e9ty at 21:44 hrs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Posting a remarkable time of 12\u2019\u201984 on Sunday in New York, American Devon Allen has an...","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"city":[],"class_list":["post-1486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paris"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paris.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paris.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paris.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paris.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/paris.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paris.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paris.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paris.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paris.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1486"},{"taxonomy":"city","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paris.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/city?post=1486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}