Thirteen reigning world champions from around the globe are converging on Monaco this week for the first Diamond League meeting that will resemble a regular top-flight international one-day meeting since the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic.

It may be held at a later date than originally planned, but in a year that has already been filled with so much uncertainty, athletes and fans have just two more days to wait until the first World Athletics Continental Tour Gold meeting of 2020 – the Paavo Nurmi Games – takes place.

When Allyson Felix and Shaunae Miller-Uibo started plotting out their 2020 season at the end of last year, they probably anticipated lining up against one another at roughly this time of year.

A few months into 2020, it soon became clear that this would be a year – and an athletics season – like no other.

With label races in Nagoya and Otsu, the weekend's road racing spotlight falls on Japan.

An assault on both the men's and women's records is expected at the Tokyo Marathon, a World Athletics Platinum level, on Sunday (1).

Ethiopian and Kenyans contingents are expected to battle for victory at the 37th Zurich Maratón de Sevilla, a World Athletics Gold Label road race, on Sunday (23).

Yulimar Rojas and Hugues Fabrice Zango will aim to inch closer to – and perhaps even surpass – the world indoor triple jump records at the Villa de Madrid meeting on Friday (21), the final stop on the World Athletics Indoor Tour.

World marathon record-holder Brigid Kosgei is the standout entrant at the 14th Ras Al Khaimah Half Marathon, a World Athletics Gold Label road race, on Friday (21).

Armand Duplantis, who has twice improved the world pole vault record in the space of a week, will seek an unprecedented hat-trick on Wednesday (19) evening as the illustrious Meeting Haut-de-France Pas-de-Calais in Liévin makes its debut in the World Athletics Indoor Tour.

Ethiopia’s rising star Roza Dereje will be the marquee athlete at the ‘eDreams Mitja Marato Barcelona’ a World Athletics Gold Label event on Sunday (16).

Fittingly, almost exactly six days and 17 hours after setting a world pole vault record of 6.17m at the last World Athletics Indoor Tour meeting, Armand Duplantis will be back on the runway at the Muller Grand Prix Glasgow on Saturday (15).