World champions to feature in Zagreb World Challenge meeting

Women's high jump winner Maria Kuchina and men's 110m hurdles victor Sergey Shubenkov from last month's IAAF World Championships will feature in the IAAF World Challenge meeting in Zagreb.

Kuchina and Shubenkov, both from Russia, will head a total of 17 freshly minted medalists from the World Championships held in China's Beijing at the Zagreb meeting which will kick off on Tuesday.

Kuchina, who topped a 2.01m career best in Beijing to beat two-time world champion Blanka Vlasic and Olympic champion Anna Chicherova, will take on Croat Ana Simic, a Beijing finalist and European bronze medalist.

Vlasic, the Beijing silver medalist and long-time national athletics heroine, will also be in attendance in the Sportspark Mladost, the venue that witnessed her first two-metre clearance and her 2.08m national record, but she won't be competing. Vlasic chose to end her season after the World Championships to fully mend from the injuries that dogged her over the past two seasons.

Shubenkov meanwhile will headline the meeting's signature race, named to honor Croatia's inter-war hurdler Boris Hanzekovic. Shubenkov, who won in Zagreb last year, blasted to a 12.98 national record in Beijing to add the world title to the pair of European crowns he won in 2012 and 2014.

The men's 110m hurdles traditionally boasts the meeting's strongest field. Unfortunately, injury in Zurich has forced perennial threat David Oliver and world leader Orlando Ortega to the sidelines, but Shubenkov will still have to fend off Frenchman Pascal Martinot-Lagarde and Jason Richardson of the United States to bag the largest trophy. Endi