Pre Classic features gold medalists galore in world champs preview; TV, stream schedule

Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon, will be the home of track and field this season, starting with this weekend’s Prefontaine Classic, the world’s top annual track and field meet.

The Diamond League competition airs live on NBC Sports on Saturday — CNBC from 4-4:30 p.m. ET, NBC from 4:30-6 and all of it streaming on NBCSports.com/live, the NBC Sports app and Peacock.

This year’s fields include 16 individual Olympic gold medalists, all of whom are bidding to return to Hayward later this summer for the USATF Outdoor Championships in June and/or the first world championships to be held in the U.S. in July.

Events start Friday on USATF.TV with U.S. Championships in the men’s and women’s 10,000m, where world championships spots are at stake. Those are followed by world-record attempts in the women’s two mile and 5000m and men’s 5000m.

Saturday will be the most star-studded single day of track and field competition this year.

Among the headliners: Jamaican Elaine Thompson-Herah, who swept the 100m and 200m golds at the last two Olympics and at last year’s Pre Classic ran the second-fastest 100m in history, five hundredths off Florence Griffith-Joyner‘s world record.

Thompson-Herah could take another crack at the record against a 100m field including Sha’Carri Richardson, who won the U.S. Olympic Trials, then was disqualified for testing positive for marijuana and missed the Tokyo Games.

World records are also under threat in the men’s pole vault (Swede Mondo Duplantis) and shot put (American Ryan Crouser). Winners of several events, including the women’s 100m hurdles and 3000m steeplechase, will likely become favorites for the world championships.

Here are the Pre Classic entry lists. Here’s the schedule of events (all times