EUGENE: French star Renaud Lavillenie will head a strong pole vault field at the May 31 Diamond League meeting at Eugene, organisers confirmed on Monday.

Lavillenie will be defending the pole vault title he won at the Prefontaine Classic last year.

He had said in March he was targeting the meeting after he returned to training in the wake of a foot injury that kept him out of the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Sopot, Poland.

In February, the London Olympic gold medallist cleared 6.16 metres in Donetsk to break by one centimetre Ukraine legend Sergei Bubka’s 21-year-old indoor world record.

Bubka still holds the outdoor world record of 6.14m set in 1994.

In Eugene Lavillenie will face a field that includes reigning world champion Raphael Holzdeppe, the 2012 Olympic bronze medallist, and fellow German Malte Mohr.

Greece’s Konstantinos Filippidis, who won the indoor world title in Sopot with Lavillenie on the sidelines is also entered.

Published in Dawn, May 14th, 2014.