World 200 me­tres bronze medal­list Jereem Richards of Trinidad & To­ba­go head­lines a hand­ful of Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean ath­letes set to run in the World Ath­let­ics Di­a­mond League meet on Fri­day in this Ital­ian city.

Richards, a two-time Com­mon­wealth Games 200 gold medal-win­ner, will be seek­ing to im­prove on his sea­son’s best time of 20.08 in the half lap of the third Di­a­mond League meet of the sea­son that fea­tures a galaxy of stars led by Olympic and world gold medal­lists on pa­rade at the 2023 Gold­en Gala.

The 29-year-old will face a com­pet­i­tive field that in­cludes Amer­i­can Erriy­on Knighton, who has de­clared one of his goals is to run a sub-19 sec­onds race this sea­son, Fil­ip­po Tor­tu, a mem­ber of the Italy 4x100m Olympic cham­pi­on team, and Aaron Brown, a mem­ber of the Cana­da 4×100 world cham­pi­on team.

For­mer world cham­pi­on Yohan Blake of Ja­maica is among the starters for the mar­quee men’s 100, which fea­tures a re­match of the full podi­um from last year’s World Cham­pi­onships, af­ter the 11th-hour ad­di­tion of sil­ver medal­list Mar­vin Bra­cy to the line-up.

Blake has a sea­son’s best time of 10.18, but he will have to run some­thing near his per­son­al best of 9.69 to up­set the Amer­i­can trio of Fred Ker­ley, Bra­cy, who re­placed Olympic 100 cham­pi­on Mar­cell Ja­cobs of Italy, and Trayvon Bromell.

For­mer world bronze medal­list Rushell Clay­ton of Ja­maica with a sea­son’s best of 54.15 and per­son­al best of 53.33 is ex­pect­ed to push the fan­cied pair of Dutch­woman Femke Bol and Amer­i­can An­na Hall in the women’s 400 hur­dles.

Bol, the new­ly crowned win­ner of the hep­tathlon at the leg­endary Hy­po Meet­ing in Gotzis, Aus­tria, is un­afraid of a chal­lenge af­ter open­ing her sea­son with a world-lead­ing 53.12 four days ago in Oordegem, Bel­gium.

The women’s 400 will fea­ture Ja­maican Can­dice MacLeod, whose best time this sea­son has been 51.17, and Guyanese Aliyah Abrams with a per­son­al best time of 50.20 set this year.

FLO­RENCE, CMC –