BATON ROUGE – After winning her second straight U.S. Indoor title in the 60-meter hurdles two weeks ago, former Lady Tiger Lolo Jones will be looking to win her first career World title this weekend as she competes in the 2008 World Indoor Championships in Valencia, Spain.
The three-day meet kicks off at the Palau Velodromo Luis Puig in Valencia on Friday with Jones scheduled to line up against the world’s best sprint hurdlers during Saturday’s competition.
Jones, who successfully defended her crown in the 60 hurdles at the 2008 AT&T USA Indoor Track and Field Championships in Boston on Feb. 24, opens this weekend’s action as the No. 2 performer in the world this season with a personal best time of 7.77 seconds.
She was USA Track & Field’s Athlete of the Week after setting a lifetime best with a runner-up finish to Sweden’s Susanna Kallur at the BW Bank Meeting in Karlsruhe, Germany, on Feb. 10.
Jones and Kallur will go head-to-head for world supremacy this weekend after Kallur set the new world record in the final of the 60-meter hurdles at the BW Bank Meeting with a time of 7.68. With her win at the USA Championships, Jones won her first career Visa Championship title and a $25,000 bonus as America’s top female performer during this indoor season.
Jones, who was an 11-time All-American and three-time NCAA champion at LSU from 2001-04, was a sixth-place finisher in the 100-meter hurdles in her debut at the 2007 IAAF World Outdoor Championships in Osaka, Japan, this past summer.
Three other former LSU standouts will also be competing in Valencia this weekend, including Alleyne Francique (400 meters), Marian Burnett (800 meters) and John Moffitt (long jump).
Francique will be representing his native Grenada as he enters the meet with a seasonal best of 46.82 and a lifetime best of 44.47 in the open quarter, while Burnett will wear the uniform of her native Guyana as she lines up alongside an elite field in the half mile with a seasonal best 2:03.76.
Moffitt is one of only two Americans scheduled to compete in the long jump at the World Indoor Championships this weekend as he opens the meet with a seasonal best mark of 25 feet, 2 ¾ inches. He is the reigning Olympic silver medalist in the event and is looking to make another run for the United States at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China, this summer.