THE most important athletics meeting before Atlanta takes place in the city of the Olympic head-quarters here tonight. A budget of $2 million (£1.3 million) - the second richest behind Zurich on the European circuit - will ensure that nearly every event stages a head-to-head that will preview what could happen in the US this month.
One of the most fascinating clashes pits Sally Gunnell against all three medallists from last year's world championships. The Briton is either in the autumn of her reign as the Olympic 400 metre hurdles champion or a few weeks away from the best victory of her career.
If it is to be the latter, she needs to take a big step up in class and break 54 seconds again after returning from the injury that kept her out in 1995. She runs against Kim Batten for the first time since the American took away her world title and broke her world record in Gothenburg, establishing a new mark of 52.61 seconds.
Gunnell, though, said she was more worried about racing Tonja Buford-Bailey, the world silver medallist, who tops this year's world rankings with the 53.53 she ran in Paris last Friday.
Batten missed the early part of the season after twisting her ankle while filming a commercial and has struggled for consistency, though she did beat Buford-Bailey in the US Olympic trials. Gunnell, whose best this year is 54.65, maintained: "I always said I thought Tonja was the one to watch this year. After coming second she would have learnt something."
Michael Johnson, the new world-record holder at 200m, said after his performance at the Olympic trials in Atlanta that he felt he could do the same in the 400m, a distance in which he is unbeaten for 53 races. He is up against Bntain's Roger Black and Iwan .Thomas, but his main opposition is likely to be the clock and Butch Reynolds's eight-year-old record of 43.29 seconds.
Johnson, who with his chopping stride broke Piefro Menaea's 17-year-old 200m record when he ran 19.66 seconds, will earn a fortune if he breaks Reynolds's record. The organisers will fork out around $50,000 and a one-kilogram gold bar worth around $10,000 for the record. On top of that, there is Johnson's appearance fee of $70,000, plus a $50,000 shoe sponsor's bonus.
If the weather is clement, then the Stade de la Pontaise may also witness another world 100m record following Leroy Burrell's mark of 9.85 seconds here in 1994.
Linford Christie should be able to gauge his Olympic chances after tonight, for the quality of the opposition could not be better.
In the 110m hurdles, Britain's world-record holder Colin Jackson faces the world and Olympic champions Allen Johnson of the United States and Mark McKoy of Austria.
