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Injuries and absences have coincided to make the Paris world athletics championships starting on August 23 a genuinely unpredictable competition.

The ninth edition of the championships will be staged in a city bidding to host the 2012 Olympics at the height of a heat wave which has gripped Europe for the past month.

Organisers expect a record entry list with around 200 countries competing at the last global track and field event before next year's Athens Olympics.

Both the men's and women's 100 metres are examples of events likely to throw up new world champions.

Maurice Greene, the three times men's champion, who lost his world record to fellow-American Tim Montgomery last September has been troubled this season by tendinitis in his right leg.

Greene still talks a good race and he is fully capable of winning in Paris, as he showed when clocking 9.94 seconds in California on June 1.

But he has been the world's premier 100 metres man now for six years, a lifetime for a sprinter, and his time may now be up.

If it is, Montgomery, partner of Olympic 100 champion Marion Jones who will not compete after giving birth to their child in June, looks increasingly unlikely to take over.

CHAMBERS' TRIUMPH?

Montgomery has neither looked or sounded like a world champion, cutting short his European tour when he embarrassingly failed to reach the final of the 100 at last Friday's London grand prix.

Bernard Williams, the new American champion, managed only fourth in London and the stage might now be set for European champion Dwain Chambers to emulate Linford Christie and win the title for Britain.

The women's race is also wide open.

Ukrainian Zhanna Block, who beat Jones to the line in Edmonton two years ago, will attempt a 100-200 double in Paris although her season has been interrupted by injury.

American champion Kelli White, who appears to be peaking at the right time on the European circuit, will be favourite in Paris ahead of the experienced Chandra Sturrup of the Bahamas.

"It's very open and it makes it a lot of fun," White said after winning in Berlin on Sunday. "It isn't much fun when everyone is talking about who's going to come second."

Some of the big names of the past few years are looking vulnerable.

Olympic 10,000 champion and record holder Haile Gebrselassie showed he was only mortal when he finished third to Charles Kamathi in Edmonton.

The greatest distance runner of modern times lost to his training partner Kenenisa Bekele in Hengelo in June, and his Ethiopian team mate also has 10,000 title aspirations in Paris.

Stacy Dragila, pioneer of the women's pole vault, has also struggled this season. A little known Russian Yelena Isinbayeva will be the favourite in Paris after raising the world record to 4.82 metres this year.

The championships will be preceded by a two-day congress at which twice Olympic 1,500 metres champion Seb Coe and prominent athletes' agent Jos Hermens will stand for election to the International Association of Athletics Federations' ruling council.

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