IAAF

“Hi friends. It’s been a really busy month for me, with all the travelling between Tokyo, Sochi, Moscow, and now writing this before I fly to Beijing, where I compete at the IAAF World Challenge meet on 21 May.

The IAAF World Challenge moves on to Beijing for the fifth leg of the 2013 series on Tuesday, and the second Asian stop on the 15-meeting circuit, with the organisers hoping that the success of long jumper Li Jinzhe at the IAAF Diamond League meeting in Shanghai at the weekend will bring in the crowds on Tuesday (21).

Russia executed a clean swept every first place bar one at the 10th edition of the European Cup Race Walking, staged in the Slovak town of Dudince on Sunday (19), and the event was also the latest round of the IAAF Race Walking Challenge.

Kenya’s Duncan Koech didn’t need to be at his best to fulfil his role as race favourite and at the Nordea Riga Marathon, in fact his winning time of 2:15:35 was only the ninth best run out of the 14 marathons he’s completed but it was sufficient to take the honours at the IAAF Bronze Label Road Race on Sunday (19).

Eritrea’s Zersenay Tadese and Ethiopia’s Mestawet Tufa set new course records when winning at the 2013 Naoko Takahashi Cup / Gifu Seiryu Half Marathon, an IAAF Bronze Label Road Race in 1:00:31 and 1:10:03 respectively on Sunday (19).

American 400m hurdler Johnny Dutch ran a world-leading time of 48.02 to upset local hero Javier Culson and US-based Ivory Coast sprinter Murielle Ahoure scored a 100m and 200m sprint double at the 7th Ponce Grand Prix in Puerto Rico, an IAAF World Challenge meeting, on Saturday (19).

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 Eagle Rock 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.

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.