Sports   Desk:

A trio of American stars highlight Thursday’s track and field line-up at the Olympics.

Noah Lyles goes for a sprint double while Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone takes on Femke Bol in the women’s 400m hurdles.

Grant Holloway will also bid to add Olympic gold to his three world titles in the 110m hurdles in Paris.

AFP Sport looks at five stand-out events on the eighth day of competition in the athletics programme.

Men’s 200m – Final

After streaking to victory in the 100m by just five-thousandths of a second over Kishane Thompson, Lyles now turns his attention to his favoured 200m.

A three-time world champion in the event, Lyles goes into the final as hot favourite.

“I spent years working on the 100m, but the 200 is where it’s at,” said Lyles. “This is where I get to show my speed and endurance and my top-end speed.

“This is where I get to show I’m stronger than everybody else.”

Contenders for the podium include teammates Kenny Bednarek and Erriyon Knighton as well as Botswana’s Letsile Tebogo.

Men’s 110m Hurdles – Final

Grant Holloway goes after the elusive medal missing from his packed trophy cabinet: Olympic gold.

The 26-year-old is a three-time world champion and the second-fastest man in history at the event, with a personal best of 12.81sec, just one-hundredth off Aries Merritt’s mark.

But he was surprisingly beaten into silver at the Covid-delayed Tokyo Games in 2021 by Jamaican Hansle Parchment.

“The biggest thing is to execute this time and not really worry about the past and continue to show great form,” said Holloway, also the two-time defending world indoor champion and world indoor record holder with a time of 7.27 seconds.

Women’s 400m Hurdles – Final

This final promises to be one of the races of the Paris Games, pitching defending champion Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone against Femke Bol of the Netherlands.

McLaughlin-Levrone was one of the stars of the Tokyo Games after setting a world record when winning gold. Bol claimed bronze in that race.

Since then, the two stars have approached competition from differing stands.

While the American is very choosy of how often she races, Bol never seems to be off the track.

Already in Paris, Bol has won one gold after anchoring the Dutch to victory in the 4x400m mixed relay, with the aim of treble gold as a runner in the women’s 4x400m relay.

Women’s Long Jump – Final

Once mighty Germany would not have normally waited till the eighth day of track and field Olympic competition for their first sniff of a gold.

They look to defending champion Malaika Mihambo to once again save their honour and also make history by becoming the first woman to defend the title.

Mihambo, 30, threw down the gauntlet when she won the European title in Rome earlier this year.

Her biggest threat is likely to come from American duo, world indoor champion Tara Davis-Woodhall and Jasmine Moore.

Moore is seeking her second medal of the Games, having already written her place into the history books by becoming earlier this week the first American to win a medal in the women’s triple jump.

Making history is nothing new to Moore — who finished runner-up to Davis-Woodhall in the USA trials — as she is the first American woman to qualify for both jumps at a Games.

Men’s Javelin – Final

This could be a cracking clash between India’s defending champion Neeraj Chopra and Arshad Nadeem of Pakistan.

Chopra made light work of qualifying, needing just one throw — his second best ever mark of 89.34 metres — and sending out a warning to the pretenders to his throne he is going to be very difficult to dislodge.

Nadeem took silver behind Chopra in the world championships last year but he knows what it takes to win a title having done so at the 2022 Commonwealth Games.

In a stacked field Julian Weber is a contender and could make Germay’s evening a double gold one.

The 29-year-old showed he is in potential title-winning form by throwing farther in qualifying than Chopra did in winning gold in Tokyo.

Others who could be contenders for medals at the very least are two former world champions Anderson Peters of Grenada, who took silver behind Nadeem in the Commonwealth Games, and Kenya’s Julius Yego, who was runner-up in the 2016 Games in Rio.