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It’s not as if Li Jinzhe came out of nowhere.

Shanghai’s IAAF Diamond League meeting on Saturday (18) produced meeting records in four events and nine world leads, the latter topped by a stunning win by China’s Li Jinzhe in the Long Jump ahead of the past three Olympic champions.

From an international perspective, much of the attention at the Oxy High Performance meeting in Los Angeles was understandably on Great Britain’s Olympic hero Mo Farah but he was rather upstaged by US prodigy Mary Cain on Friday night (17).

Once again athletes from across the planet will converge upon Ottawa for the Tamarack Ottawa Race Weekend on 25-26 May for the 10km and Marathon – both of them IAAF Silver Label Road Races – and among them will be a large contingent of Ethiopians.

It has been just three weeks since Duncan Koech competed in his last Marathon, but the Kenyan is set to tackle another 26 miles this Sunday (19) at the Nordea Riga Marathon – an IAAF Bronze Label Road Race – in the Latvian capital.

As befits a nation’s capital, Ottawa proudly hosts a world-class Marathon, which has achieved the IAAF Silver Label Road Race status the past five years. What is unique in this Canadian city is that, on the same weekend, it also runs an IAAF Silver Label 10km race.

World and Olympic 400m champion Kirani James has come to the end of his studies for this year, and is gearing up for his first IAAF Diamond League appearance of 2013.

The third annual Naoko Takahashi Cup Gifu Seiryu Half Marathon has only ever had one men’s winner in the short history of the IAAF Bronze Label Road Race – Kenya’s Martin Mathathi. But the two-time champion will this Sunday (19) be up against World record-holder Zersenay Tadese.

Diamonds may be cool, like ice, but the competition in the Shanghai IAAF Diamond League on Saturday (18) will be anything but.

Augusto de Oliveira needed just three attempts to take the lead in the Pole Vault at the Grande Premio Internacional Caixa in Uberlandia on Thursday (16). A fourth and final jump bagged him the South American record.

The Olympic 110m Hurdles champion and World record holder was at Friday’s press conference ahead of the 2013 Shanghai IAAF Diamond League; so, too, the World champion, along with one of China’s emerging hurdlers.

With nine days to go until the adidas Grand Prix – the first of two US-based legs of the IAAF Diamond League – 10 more global champions, past and present, have been added to the line-up.

Olympic champions Allyson Felix, Brittney Reese and Christian Taylor are just some of the latest athletes to commit to Rome’s Golden Gala on 6 June, the fifth leg of the IAAF Diamond League.

Olympic champion Ashton Eaton and World champion Tatyana Chernova are just two of the many names in the star-studded cast announced so far for the Hypo Meeting – the second leg of the IAAF Combined Events Challenge – in Gotzis, Austria, on 25-26 May.

The IAAF World Championships, Moscow 2013, which takes place from 10 to 18 August, will be infused with memories of the last global athletics championship to be staged in the famous Luzhniki Stadium: the 1980 Olympic Games.

Local hero Javier Culson and USA’s Michael Tinsley, both Olympic medallists, are expected to deliver an exciting London rematch this Saturday as the main attraction of 7th Ponce Grand Prix – the fifth leg of the IAAF World Challenge.

Aries Merritt headlines a stellar 110m Hurdles field at the 39th Prefontaine Classic, part of the IAAF Diamond League, to be held on 1 June in Eugene. And after three top-five finishes in his past three appearances at the meeting, Merritt now wants to win.

World and Olympic Discus champion Robert Harting and Ethiopia’s leading distance-running sisters Tirunesh and Genzebe Dibaba are among the latest athletes to sign up for the 52nd Ostrava Golden Spike, an IAAF World Challenge meeting, on June 27.

The provisional entry lists for the second meeting of the 2013 season of the IAAF Diamond League on Saturday 18 May in Shanghai, China, are now available.

Monaco’s famous Louis II Stadium will see the return of France’s reigning Olympic and European Pole Vault champion, and French record holder, Renaud Lavillenie for the Herculis 2013 meeting, the 10th leg of this year’s IAAF Diamond League, on 19 July.