18th May 2007 00:00
The packed schedule gets underway at 8am on
Sunday with the longest race in athletics - the mens' 50km walk, while
a Junior 10km for Men and Women will precede the hightlights of the
events, the 20km for Men and Women.Men's 20km
Russia dominate the men's 20km rankings with three having already walked under 1:20:00 this year.
Valeriy Borchin is fastest ranked this year in the field, which is missing the world number one Francisco Fernández, who is concentrating on World Championships preparations.
Borchin finished second to Fernández in the European Championships in Gothenburg last August where he walked exactly 1:20:00 - 18 seconds inside Fernández's UK all-comers record set on the same course here in Leamington in April 2000.
Italy's Olympic Champion Ivano Brugnetti, right, has shown erratic form after recovering from injury. His best time so far this year of 1:20:21 in Portugal is the fastest non-Russian performance of any in the field but he faded badly after 15km in the ‘Coppa Citta Sesto San Giovanni' two weeks ago.
Norway's Erik Tysse maybe only ranked sixth fastest, but is familiar with Leamington and in form having claimed victory in the Italian round of the IAAF Challenge.
Men 50km
The packed schedule gets underway at 8am on Sunday with the longest race in athletics - the mens' 50km walk.
The strongest team is likely to be Russia. In Miskolc, they dominated - with Alexei Voyevodin heading a team that made a clean sweep of all the podium places.
Three of the same team are set to compete, and should be victorious again despite missing World champion Sergey Kirdyapkin and World Cup winner Denis Nizhegorodov. Voyevodin, below right, claimed the World championship silver medal in 2005 despite injury and did not finish in La Coruí±a last year.
Russia face strong opposition from a maximum strength Spanish team that includes former world champion and European silver medalist last year Jesús ngel García and a previous Leamington Gran
d Prix winner - José Alesandro Gambil.Garcia has already produced two world level times this year and is one of two walkers, along with Voyevodin, to have beaten the 3:40:00 barrier in his long career.
However, form counts less than months of tough training and arrival in peak condition, as shown by Robert Korzeniowski who late in his illustrious career chose to contest just one 50km race each year.
Norway's Trond Nymark has made steady progress over the last decade to be a serious challenger at the highest level and has targeted the European Cup. Just back from altitude training in South Africa the European Championship fourth placer has said 'I plan to be the favourite'.
He is determined to learn from the experience of narrowly failing to win a medal last summer to Russia's Yuriy Andronov. 'In Gothenburg I should have kept to my own pace rather than to try to react to what competitors did. That was a big mistake.'
Nymark is only ranked fifth fastest on personal best times - with his national record 3:41:30 good enough for second place in the World Cup. 'On average since 2000 I've been improving about two and a half minutes per year so I think I should be capable of beating the 3:40 barrier given the same conditions as at La Coru&n