A STRONG contingent of South Africa’s top athletes and several international stars will compete in the first of the 1999 Absa series prestige meetings in Bloemfontein on January 23. A showdown is expected between Africa’s number one discus thrower and 1998 Commonwealth Games silver medallist, Free Stater Frantz Kruger, and Aleksandr Borichevsky, the Russian champion. Fritz Potgieter, from Pretoria, will also compete in the discus and — with Kruger — will want to avenge their defeat by Borichevsky in last year’s Absa competition in Roodepoort. Potchefstroom’s Shaun Bownes will meet two European world-class hurdlers — Slovakia’s Igor Kovac (silver medallist at the world championship in Athens) and Belgian champion Sven Pieters.