Reigning world and Olympic champ Brittney Reese headlines Husky Classic...

SEATTLE--Reigning world and Olympic champion Brittney Reese (left/photo by Paul Merca) is the featured entry in this weekend's Husky Classic at the Dempsey Indoor on the campus of the University of Washington.

Reese, the 2012 Olympic gold medalist, winner of four career world titles--two indoors and two outdoors, as well as the American record holder indoors in the long jump at 23-8 3/4 (7.23m), will contest both her specialty as well as the 60 meter dash on Saturday, according to a note sent to paulmerca.blogspot.com by her agent, Mark Pryor.

In order to get sharp for next weekend's Millrose Games in New York, Reese will take three jumps, and run the 60, an event that the University of Mississippi alum contested last weekend in Saskatoon, where she ran a season best of 7.30, just off of her personal best of 7.24.

The long jump will be contested early at 10 am, with the preliminary heats of the 6 at 1:20, and the finals opening the invitational portion of the meet at 3:05 pm.

The facility record in the long jump is 21-6 (6.55m) set in 2004 by US Olympian Grace Upshaw, and the meet record is 21-2 1/2 (6.46m) set by Canadian Olympian Ruky Abdulai.

In a quick glance of accepted entries, notable US Olympians entered include Oregon TC/Eugene's Geena Gall in the mile; new Bellingham resident Donn Cabral in the mile against fellow steeplechase Olympian Evan Jager; and, Lopez Lomong in the 800 in a great matchup against Tacoma's Matt Scherer and Mark Wieczorek. 

As always, the distance races for both men and women will provide lots of excitement as many of the top collegians converge upon one of the nation's fastest tracks to chase those top-16 marks needed to qualify for the NCAA championships in Fayetteville, Arkansas next month (the NCAA abandoned automatic and provisional qualifying marks in Division I, with the 16 best marks from the season advancing to the nationals).  

The mens mile could potentially see enough competitors break four minutes to bring the number of times the mark's been broken to 100--the number stands unofficially at 86, with Galen Rupp the latest at the season opening UW Preview last month.

The list of accepted entries for the Husky Classic is available here; the tentative time schedule is available here (note that the schedule is subject to change).