The seventh International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Diamond League meetings of the season may have moved to a smaller venue but there is still the usual heavyweight collection of top athletes on show in what will prove a fascinating pointer towards the World Championships  in London that are due to start in just over a month’s time.

Home pole vault world record holder Renaud Lavillenie, having done his patriotic duty by winning his event at the European Athletics Team Championships for a sixth time in Lille last Sunday (June 25), meets the American who became the latest member of the 6.00 metre club last weekend, Sam Kendricks.

Russia’s world 110 metres hurdles champion Sergey Shubenkov, racing under a neutral banner, meets Jamaica’s Olympic champion Omar McLeod, winner of the national trials last weekend in a Jamaican record of 12.90sec.

 Jamaica’s Olympic 100m champion Elaine Thompson meets the Ivory Coast's Murielle Ahoure and in the men’s triple jump Olympic and world champion Christian Taylor faces his United States rival Will Claye and the Cuban who provided him with such epic opposition in 2015, Pablo Pedro Pichardo.

Add to that the return of Bahrain’s Olympic champion Ruth Jebet, who provided the Meeting de Paris’s first world record last year in the women’s 3,000m steeplechase.

Athletic riches indeed for a city already looking forward to its hosting of the 2020 European Championshps and, beyond that, the 2024 Olympics and Paralympic Games.

Lavillennie, who won here last year with 5.93m, achieved his 2017 best of 5.83m behind Kendricks in the Shanghai Diamond League meeting and his easy 5.80m clearance in Lille indicates his strong form.

But Kendricks, winner of the Olympic bronze behind Lavillenie’s silver at  Rio 2016, is clearly in superb form himself. 

Also in the mix will be Canada’s world champion Shawnacy Barber, with a best of 5.71m this season.

McLeod headlines a stacked 110m hurdles event requiring two preliminary heats. 

French hopes will ride high on the shoulders of Garfield Darien, winner at the IAAF World Challenge meeting in Ostrava on Wednesday (June 28) in 13.09.

Thompson won her national title last week in the fastest time seen this year, 10.71, just 0.01 seconds off her personal best. 

Ahoure, who has a 2017 best of 10.83, looks best equipped to challenge.

Paris will witness the triple jump competition that never happened at last weekend’s USA Track and Field World Championships trials in Sacramento, where Taylor made only a token appearance, flying over from Europe and deliberately fouling out on his first attempt, in order to activate the wild card he has to defend his world title in London. 

Claye won the US title in a personal best of 17.91m; Taylor returned to Europe and set a meeting record of 17.57 in Ostrava.

The 20-year-old Jebet, who ran a world record of 8min 52.78sec here last year, will face an 18-year-old from her original country of origin, Kenya, in the shape of Celliphine Chepteek Chespol, who earned a breakthrough victory at the Eugene Diamond League meeting in 8:58.78.

The race could hardly be stronger, as the Olympic silver and bronze medallists, Kenya’s Hyvin Kiyong and Emma Coburn of the US, are also here.

Germany’s Olympic javelin champion Thomas Rohler will seek to maintain his stupendous standards. 

His throw of 93.90m at the opening Diamond League meeting of the season in Doha put him second on the all-time list behind the Czech Republic's Jan Zelezny, and since then he has produced three more 90m-plus throws, managing two in Ostrava, where he recorded 91.53m and 91.02m.

Team-mate Johannes Vetter, second with 87.88m, and the Czech Republic’s Jakub Vadlejch, who beat Rohler at the European Athletics Team Championships with a Championship record of 87.95m, was third with 86.43m. 

Both are in Paris as well.

Home eyes in the men’s 800m will be on Pierre-Ambrose Bosse, fourth at Rio 2016, who will be running his first race over his specialist distance this season following injuries. 

The field contains a wealth of talent including Botswana’s London 2012 silver medallist Nijel Amos, also seeking his best form, plus a hugely talented Kenyan contingent of Kipyegon Bett, Robert Biwott, Alfred Kipketer and Ferguson Rotich.

Qatar’s Olympic high jump silver medallist Mutaz Essa Barshim, who has the top five performances of 2017 with a best of 2.38m, is already assured of a place in the Diamond League final and can concentrate on perfecting his preparations for London.

Not so Gianmarco Tamberi. 

The extravagantly gifted Italian grievously injured his ankle at last year’s Diamond League meeting in Monaco, where he set a national record of 2.39m before coming to grief in an attempt at 2.42. 

His season finished, he was a forlorn spectator at Rio 2016, cheering on his team-mates with his leg in a brace.

In Ostrava he managed his best of the season so far, 2.20m but knows he will need to step up to reach a level commensurate with his talents.

Sifan Hassan of The Netherlands and Kenya’s Olympic champion Faith Kipyegon lead the Diamond League standings in the women’s 1500m, and both are in Paris seeking the points that will confirm their place in the final. 

Hassan leads the 2017 lists with her 3:56.14 clocking in winning on home soil in Hengelo, while Kipyegon’s 2017 best is 3:59.22.

Ameer Webb, who held off the emerging talent of Christian Coleman to win the 200m at the USATF trials in 20.09, has already qualified for his Diamond League final, and looks favourite in a field that also contains Greece’s Lykourgos-Stefanos Tsakonas, who has run 20.33 this year.

Kenya’s 21-year-old Ronald Kwemoi, winner of the Doha Diamond League 3,000m with a 2017 best time of 7:28.23 will face a strong challenge from Ethiopia’s 19-yer-old Yomif Kejelcha, the only qualifier so far for the men’s 5,000m final.

The meeting will also feature a triathlon put together to showcase home Olympic decathlon silver medallist Kevin Mayer, who will have high hopes in London now that US world record holder Ashton Eaton has retired.