Over 1,600 of the most talented young athletics talent from 44 counties arrive in Birmingham today, to compete in the 75th Annual All England Schools Athletics Championships at the Alexander Stadium.

With 105 track and 46 field events, there will be more events crammed into two long days than there are in the entire Olympic Games Athletics programme.

The action gets underway at 10am each day and will conclude at 5.30pm after the relay races on Saturday afternoon.

Although this meeting was staged twice in Perry Barr in the 1980s, it will be the first occasion that it has returned to Birmingham in 18 years.

The winners in 1987 included marathon star Jon Brown, sprinter Donna Fraser and Steve Backley who broke the javelin record. Fiona May of Derbyshire won the senior girls long jump, eight years before she became world champion in Italy's colours while double Olympic champion Kelly Holmes won her third English Schools title and paid her first visit to the stadium that she was to grace so many times in the future.

More than 30 Olympians in both Sydney and Athens had previously won English Schools titles. One fascination will be to attempt to identify which teenagers in action this weekend might emerge in seven years' time as stars of the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

Long jumper Amy Harris and Julian Thomas (200m and 4x100m relay) will be keen to add ESSA titles to their Commonwealth youth titles as preparation for the European Junior Championships in Latvia later this month.

Sixteen-year old Jade Surman goes in the intermediate girls long jump prior to flying to Marrakesh for next week's World Youth Heptathlon Championships.

Warwickshire's Lee Carey bids to complete a cross-country and track 3,000m double.