London 2012 gold medal winner Renaud Lavillenie will be coming to Tignes in January for a unique athletics event at altitude.
The French pole vaulter will be joined by sprinter Christophe Lemaitre, who won the bronze medal in the 200m at the Rio Olympics earlier this year.
Both French stars will take part in the ‘Tignes Indoor Sprint and Jump’ – the first international indoor athletics event of the year – taking place from the 3rd to 6th of January.
Tignes will use their unique ‘Tignespace’ facility – a 5000 sqm complex that has previously been used by for training by the French Athletics Federation.
The centre includes an 80m five-lane athletics track and pits for high jump, pole vault, long jump and triples jump.
It’s available for public hire every day from €5 per person, but for four days in January it will feature world class athletes in competition at 2100m above sea level – almost certainly the highest altitude they will have ever competed.
The format will see six men and six women contest the Triple Jump & Long Jump from 5.30pm on Tuesday 3rd January, with the best two after three jumps going head-to-head with two more attempts.
Wednesday 4th January sees local athletes compete for the chance to race against the elite sprinters – including Christophe Lemaitre – the following day. Finals day on the 5th starts at 6pm with two heats to decide seeding, then head-to-head quarters, semis and final.
On Friday 6th January, six men and six women, including Renaud Lavillenie will compete in the international pole vault competition. This final event of the week will start at 6pm.
Entrance to all the events is free and the full schedule for the week is as follows:
3rd January: Long Jump & Triple Jump contest
4th January: 60m Sprint qualifying rounds
5th January: 60m Sprint finals
6th January: International Pole Vault contest
