Athletics at the Paris Olympics: five stand-outs on Day 2

Athletics kicks off at the Paris Olympics at the Stade de France on Friday.

AFP Sport looks at five standouts on Day 2 of competition in track and field.

Men's 10 000m - final

The sole final scheduled for Friday is the men's 10 000m.

Three-time world champion Joshua Cheptegei of Uganda will be vying for his first Olympic title over the distance, having won silver in the Tokyo Games.

But competition will be rude, with defending champion Selemon Barega one of three strong Ethiopians in the line-up alongside Yomif Kejelcha and Berihu Aregawi.

Cheptegei's teammate Jacob Kiplimo should also be in the running for a podium spot.

Women's 100m

Sha'Carri Richardson's quest for Olympic redemption gets under way with the opening heats of the women's 100.

The 24-year-old Texan is aiming to become the first American to be crowned the world's fastest woman with Olympic 100m gold since Gail Devers triumphed at the 1996 Atlanta Games.

Richardson's route to gold has been made easier by the demise of Jamaica's defending champion Elaine Thompson-Herah, the 2016 and 2020 Olympics gold medallist who is out with injury, as well as Shericka Jackson, who is concentrating on the 200m.

But Richardson -- who missed out on the Tokyo Olympics three years ago after a positive test for marijuana at the US trials -- still faces a potential challenge from Saint Lucia's Julien Alfred, who has the world's third-fastest time this season at 10.78sec.

Women's 5 000m

Dutch long-distance star Sifan Hassan has made a career out of testing the boundaries of the possible, and in Paris the 31-year-old Ethiopian-born plans to push herself to the limit once more with bids for a treble of 5 000m, 10 000m and the marathon.

Hassan, the reigning 5 000m and 10 000m Olympic champion is aiming to emulate the feat of the great Czech athlete Emil Zatopek, who achieved the men's triple in Helsinki in 1952.

"I am a curious person looking forward to the challenges and trying to find out what is possible. I love the journey as much as the challenge," said Hassan, who runs in the opening heats of the 5,000m on Friday.

Hassan also ran three events in Tokyo, winning a bronze in the       1 500m in addition to her wins in the 5 000m and 10 000m.

Women's high jump

Ukraine's Yaroslava Mahuchikh carries not only her own hopes of Olympic gold into the event, but also the extra weight of her war-torn nation.

The 22-year-old has handled it well up to this point -- a world title last year and breaking the 37-year-old world record on her previous visit to Paris in July.

Although she is based in Germany -- "The hardest moment was saying goodbye to my family, my father" -- she has delivered humanitarian aid to her compatriots.

Sporting blue and yellow eye make-up she, like many of her teammates, believe they are playing their role in the war effort against Russia by competing as high-profile athletes.

"Your performance amplifies the reach of our story, and nothing attracts more attention to your message than winning a gold medal," she said.

"We all have a responsibility to aid in the defence of Ukraine, with our part being to compete. That's our arena of battle."

Men's 1 500m

Reigning champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen will kick off the defence of his Olympic 1 500m crown in morning heats, with hopes pinned on no repeat of the last two world championship finals.

Firstly, in Eugene in 2022 and then Budapest in 2023, the Norwegian was beaten down the home stretch by Britons, respectively Jake Wightman and Josh Kerr.

With Wightman out injured, Ingebrigtsen will once more come up against Kerr, a rivalry that has led to more than one crossed word.

"It's nice to see the 1 500m back in the spotlight," said World Athletics president Sebastian Coe.

"It's a sumptuous thought that the two best 1 500m milers of their generation and for some time potentially in a head-to-head and there's added piquancy because this is probably not a friendship made in heaven.

"That doesn't bother me either. We know we want that kind of thing in the sport. So it really could be a race for the ages."