Jeremy Wariner is running the 200 meters. Allyson Felix is racing the 400m. The two American stars are breaking from their usual events Friday at the Doha Super Grand Prix. Wariner is Olympic and multiple world champion in the 400, yet wants to sharpen his finishing speed ahead of the Beijing Games. He is looking to make a point by beating his personal best in the 200m of 20.19 seconds. Felix, meanwhile, is eager to get an individual 400m under her belt early in the season. She is a big favorite to add the Olympic title to her 200m-400m double at the world championships. Felix also has the speed to challenge in the 100m. If she wants to go for four golds in Beijing, she will also have to run in the 1,600m relay. Things are more straightforward for Blanka Vlasic. The Croat is the world's best high jumper by a stretch and will stick to that discipline in the evening heat at the Qatar Sports Club. It is the first major meet of the pre-Olympic season. Asafa Powell, the world recorder holder in the 100, was supposed to run here but is out with a chest injury. Felix likes the meet so much that she will be defending two titles here, adding a 100m race to the 400m in heat that could still peak into the 30Cs (deep into the 80Fs) in the evening. The athletes will be facing high temperatures in Beijing, too, so there is no use complaining about it. “Back home in Texas, I train in the heat so I am used to it. We have a lot of humidity so it feels hotter than it is,” Wariner said. With less than 100 days to go to the Aug. 8-24 games, Wariner needs to add acceleration to his stamina. “The more 200s I run, and the faster I can get those the better my quarter (400m) will be,” he said. “The best for me to do is to get more speed to go with the strength I already have.” On Friday, Wariner will be tested by his toughest 400m rival, LaShawn Merritt, who is taking a similar approach to the season with his 200m. For Felix, the few races she already has run this season mean little. “I'm just looking forward to kind of opening things up” on Friday, not really knowing what to expect from her first individual races in the season. Her first target is the US Olympic trials from June 27-July 6 in Eugene, Oregon, where she will compete in the 100m and 200m. “I have a lot of work to do before the trials. I am not sure how it is going to play out on Friday night,” she said. In the Penn Relays last month, Felix was part of victorious 400m and 1,600m relays. And now that she has graduated from the University of Southern California, Beijing is her main concern. Vlasic already got off to a winning start this season, taking the world indoor championship gold with her 22nd straight victory. She is injury-free and eager as ever. Ethiopians pull out Ethiopian athletes pulled out of the event because of political tension between the two countries, organizers said. “We had prepared everything for them: the visa, the tickets and everything,” said Dahlan Al-Hamad, the president of the Qatar athletics federation. “Unfortunately politics got into sports.” Last month, Ethiopia broke off diplomatic relations with Qatar over its relations with Eritrea. – AP __
