Felix warms up for possible world double

DOHA (Reuters) - Three-times world 200 champion Allyson Felix will run over 400 metres on Friday in the opening Diamond League meeting of the season while she considers whether to double at the Daegu world championships this year.

"I'm not starting with a particular time in mind but I think a sub-50 second performance is not out of the realm of possibility," Felix told reporters on Thursday.
Otherwise the start of the May-to-September series, which is offering $8 million in prize money over 14 meetings, looks low key with many of the sport's biggest names missing.
The world's fastest men, Usain Bolt, Tyson Gay and Asafa Powell, are absent with no 100 metres scheduled while Kenyan 800 metres world record holder David Rudisha has withdrawn.
Both Rudisha and Sudanese double world indoor 800 metres champion Abubaker Kaki have been sidelined with leg problems.
In their absence, American shot putters Christian Cantwell, Reese Hoffa and Tomasz Majewski and France's Teddy Tamgho and Renaud Lavillenie have an opportunity to grab the headlines.
Majewski is the Olympic champion with Cantwell and Hoffa the 2009 and 2007 world outdoor champions respectively.
Triple jumper Tamgho will be returning to the city where he set his first indoor world record while top-ranked pole vaulter Lavillenie hopes to continue his recent dominance of the event.
"I won it last year here and I want to win it again. Of course another new national record is a goal, too," said Lavillenie, who boosted the French indoor record to 6.03 metres in March.
On the track there is a 400 metres hurdles showdown between top-ranked American Bershawn Jackson and South African LJ van Zyl and strong 1,500 and 3,000 metres fields.
Meanwhile, Bolt, Gay and Powell will begin their Diamond League seasons later this year.
Powell will open in Shanghai on May 15 in a tuneup for a May 26 clash with fellow-Jamaican and world and Olympic 100 and 200 champion Bolt in Rome. Bolt also has Diamond League races scheduled for Oslo, Paris and Monaco.
American Gay will run his first 100 metres in New York in June and later meet Powell over that distance in Birmingham and London.
The circuit, for the first time, willl honour the top overall male and female athletes in addition to its season's leader awards in each event.