Tsegay's prospective challenge at Liévin’s Arena Stade Couvert will form one of the highlights of the fourth of this season’s seven World Athletics Indoor Tour Gold meetings which form a lead-up to the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Belgrade from March 18 to 20.

The 25-year-old Ethiopian, who took the 5,000m Olympic bronze medal at Tokyo 2020, ran 3min 53.09sec in her landmark performance of 2021 at the Meeting Hauts-de-France Pas-de-Calais and this time round her aim is to better the mile record that currently stands at 4:13.31, set by compatriot Genzebe Dibaba in 2016. 

Dibaba’s world indoor 1500m record looked impregnable until Tsegay took two seconds off it - what can she do tomorrow?

The 21-year-old Barega, who beat Ugandans Joshua Cheptegei, the world record holder, and Jacob Kiplimo, the world half marathon champion, to Olympic gold, is also returning to a scene of triumph.

He began the 2021 season with a landmark performance in the Liévin meeting, setting the third-best indoor 3,000m mark of all time, 7:26.10, behind his compatriot Getnet Wale, who won in 7:24.98.

Only one man in history has bettered that - Kenya’s Daniel Komen, who in Budapest in 1998 set the 3,000m world indoor record of 7:24.90 that will be Barega’s focus as both he and Wale return to this track.

Ingebrigtsen, the Olympic 1500m champion, will race over that distance against a field including Ethiopia’s 22-year-old world indoor 1500m champion Samuel Tefara, whose indoor personal best of 3:31.04 is 0.76 seconds faster than that of the 21-year-old Norwegian - a European record he set last year on this track.

It was recently announced that Ingebrigtsen’s father, Gjert, had stepped away from his long-time role as coach due to ill health, with Jakob's elder brother Henrik stepping in; what effect this may have upon this running phenomenon remains to be seen.

Jacobs, who had never broken 10 seconds for the 100 metres before 2021, produced one of the biggest shocks of the delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympics when he won the blue riband title in 9.80sec before skipping the rest of the season.

Jacobs ran 6.51 to win the men’s 60m final at the Indoor Tour Silver meeting in Berlin on February 4 in his first event since claiming Olympic 100m and 4x100m gold in Tokyo.

He followed up with victory in 6.49 - the second-fastest time of his career - at the Indoor Tour Silver meeting in Lodz on February 11.

The 27-year-old Italian sprinter told Agence France-Presse yesterday as he prepared to repeat his Liévin  victory of 2021 that he was "getting back in shape" after his recent return to competition.

His dramatic improvement and immediate post-Olympic absence prompted sceptical reports in numerous media outlets.

But he brushed off the media misgivings, adding: "After a certain point, continuing to talk about it [doping] is quite sad on their part.

"It's not my fault that they're not able to understand that someone other than the favourite won.

“It's not OK, especially as they don't have any kind of proof."

Now Jacobs is looking forward to World Indoor Championships and their outdoor equivalent due to take place in the newly reconstructed Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon from July.

"After the Games, I was exhausted, not only physically, but also mentally," he added.

"I wanted to avoid hurting myself."

Also in the 60m field tomorrow will be Ronnie Baker of the United States, who finished fifth at Tokyo 2020.

Like Jacobs, Nageotte has happy memories of this arena, the American having won in Liévin in 2019 with 4.62 metres.

At Tokyo 2020, 4.90m was enough for her to take gold ahead of her main likely rival tomorrow in world champion Anzhelika Sidorova of the Russian Olympic Committee, whose 2021 best of 5.01m put her second on the all-time outdoor list behind the 2009 world record of 5.06m set by fellow countrywoman Yelena Isinbayeva.

Meanwhile, the men’s 60m hurdles will feature the American world champion and Olympic silver medallist Grant Holloway, who last year lowered the world record of 7.30 set in 1994 by Britain’s Colin Jackson to 7.29.