How to watch the Maurie Plant Meet live on 7plus with world’s best commentary team

The Maurie Plant Meet at Melbourne’s Lakeside Stadium will be streamed live and free on 7plus form 6.50pm AEDT.

The Gold Tour athletics event will feature an Olympic champion, the world’s fastest man, Australia’s newest global medallists, plus a host of Australia’s most prolific Olympians and Paralympians.

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The Maurie Plant Meet is Australia’s first World Athletics Continental Tour Gold level meet and will offer Australian sports fans an athletics event like no other. It begins on Thursday night, February 23, from 6.50pm AEDT.

Seven’s Olympic and Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games commentary team front the coverage, with iconic sports broadcaster Bruce McAvaney leading the line-up.

McAvaney will be joined by Olympians Tamsyn Lewis-Manou and David Culbert in the box, and reporter Jason Richardson will be on the ground for both the broadcast and in-stadium commentary.

Australian sprint star Rohan Browning will be in action during the Mauri Plant Meet at Lakeside Stadium. Credit: Getty Images

It is part of Seven’s continued support for athletics after recently agreeing to a three-year deal to broadcast the 100th edition of the Australian Track and Field Championships.

The Continental Tour Gold series is the uppermost level on the World Athletics Continental Tour calendar, sitting just under the Diamond League in status.

Each meet attracts the best athletes across the globe, with 14 existing meets offered in Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas and for the next three years, in Oceania.

The 200m sprint is the most highly anticipated event of the night and will see the fastest man in the world Fred Kerley (USA) in action.

The world champion will take on Australia’s fastest man Rohan Browning, World Athletics Championships representative Jake Doran and World under-20 bronze medallist Calab Law.

Kerley’s personal best of 19.76-seconds places him in a league of his own on paper, but the raw talent of Law and Australian under-20 record holder at 20.41-seconds Aidan Murphy will have nothing to lose.

Fred Kerley is expecting to break the 20-second barrier in the 200m at the Maurie Plant meet. Credit: AAP

A head-to-head matchup not to be missed is the women’s long jump, with Australian record holder and 2022 world lead Brooke Buschkuehl (nee Stratton) lining up against American sensation Tara Davis-Woodhall.

Davis-Woodhall will be fired up to impress the Australian crowds after recently setting a new world lead of 6.99m at the United States Indoor Championships.

Olympic 1500m champion Matthew Centrowitz (USA) takes on Commonwealth champion Oliver Hoare in the John Landy Mile, with the race featuring 16-year-old Aussie prodigy Cameron Myers, Paralympic star Jaryd Clifford and Kiwi Samuel Tanner.

An international affair awaits in the women’s 1500m with US Olympic stars Heather MacLean and Emma Coburn, along with Ethiopian World under-20 medallists Medina Eisa and Melknat Wudu. But expect the cheers to be loudest for Australia’s trio of Jessica Hull, Abbey Caldwell and Georgia Griffith.

World Cross Country bronze medallists Hull and Caldwell will look to build upon their success of the weekend just gone, while World Championship finalist Griffith possesses fresh legs and strong credentials. MacLean looms as the major danger to spoil the Australian party, while compatriot and steeplechase world champion Coburn has forged a long resume as a fierce competitor.

The 3000m race starts at 8.24pm AEDT with Aussie Stewart McSweyn taking on a world-class field.

Fresh off his world cross-country success at Bathurst where he finished inside the top-20, rising middle-distance star Archie Noakes is also in the field of runners for the 3000m event.

The Maurie Plant Meet was previously known as the Melbourne Track Classic. It’s name was changed to honour the athletics stalwart who died in 2020.