Diamond League: Dani Stevens set for early season showdown with Perković

Australian Dani Stevens continues on her own road to Tokyo 2020 as she squares off against 2016 Olympic women’s discuss thrower Sandra Perković in a field of seven on Friday night in Doha.

Stevens recently crushed a 20-year-old Commonwealth Games record with a 68.26-metre throw en route to winning the gold medal on the Gold Coast last month, but the 29-year-old New South Wales native will have her hands full with her Croatian rival who is beginning her bid for a seventh Diamond Trophy.

Perković, who is one of 17 reigning world and Olympic champions to participate in the 2018 Diamond League opener, has already recorded a season’s best 69.13m.

However Stevens, who threw an Australian record of 69.64 to take silver at last year’s world championships in London, is hopeful a 70m throw is close at hand.

“It was really amazing to get that and I kind of wanted to put it out there so that hopefully no one breaks it any time soon,’’ the 2009 world champion told The Australian following her Comm Games record.

“Watching my 68 back I thought straight away, if I just finished a bit taller I would have got a bit more height into it. I definitely think I’m in 70m shape but my ultimate goal has always been about the 72m mark.

“I don’t like odd numbers, so we had to go 72 rather than 71,” she continued. “That is my ultimate lifetime goal and I haven’t really said that out loud much in the last couple of years, but I feel like now I’m consistent enough to throw 68-plus at major championships, then in a couple of years with some hard work …

While no woman has thrown further than 72m since the drug-fueled throws of 1989, Perković did score a 71.41 last year.

Aside from Perković and Stevens, Cuba’s Denia Caballero, the 2016 Olympic bronze medallist who beat Perkovic to win the 2015 world title is also in the mix for winning throw and top 3 result.

Following Doha, Diamond League will host 13 other one-day athletics events around the world including Shanghai, Eugene, Rome, Oslo, Stockholm, Paris, Lausanne, Rabat, Monaco, London, Birmingham, Zurich and Brussels.

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