Pune: Bahrain’s defending champion Shitaye Eshete Habtegebrel created a new championship record in women's 10000m on the opening day of 20th Asian Athletics Championshipsat the Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex, here on Wednesday.
Japan’s Ayumi Hagiwara did the front running in the race with Eshete and Alia Saeed of United Arab Emirates hanging on with her on the lead bunch. Both Saeed and Eshete were trying to increase the tempo yet Hagiwara remained on the lead till midway.
Eshete, sixth in the London Olympics last year as well as the World championships in Daegu two years ago, revealed her locomotive talent to surge past the other two after changing the lead role just eight laps to go. Breaking away from the rest she increased the gap between her and others widely. Braving the rain Eshete went on the clock a new meet mark in 32:17.29 as well as defends her title from Kobe-2011.
Alia Saeed (32:39.39) and Hagiwara (32:47.44) filled the other two places on the podium while India’s Preeja Sreedharan clocked a season best 33:41.97 for her fourth place. Two other Indians, Suriya Loganathan (34:43.63) and Monika Athare (34:44.38) have been finished seventh and eighth places respectively with season best marks.
Om Prakash and Mayookha won bronze medals for India The Indian camp satisfied with two bronze medals on the opening day. Defending champion Mayookha Johny had difficulties on a slippery runway and only finished third in the women’s long jump with a fourth round 6.30m. Japan’s 2009 bronze medallist Sachiko Masumi pockets the gold with a 6.55m leap while Uzbekh lady Anastasiya Juravleva went home with a silver medal in 6.36m.
Om Prakash Singh, the 2009 Asian champion, started well and led the field with his second round throw of 19.45m. However Saudi Arabia’s Sultan Abdulmajeed Al-Hebshi, the reigning Asian Games champion, snatched the lead from the Indian with his fourth round 19.60m and went on to win the event tossing the iron ball to 19.68m which he achieved on the fifth round. Chang Ming-huang, the Chinese Taipei thrower, who is one of the pre-event favourite to win the gold here put the shot to 19.61m for the silver.
Krishna Poonia disappoints in discus throw
Commonwealth Games champion Krishna Poonia disappointed her fans as she
repeated her fourth place finish from the last edition. Having won three bronze medals in the Asian championships, Poonia was expected to stand on the podium once again. However the slippery circle made things complicated for the Indian as she could manage only 55.01m, her best of the day, on the second round. Her series read as follows—54.29, 55.01, 52.89, 53.83, 54.22 and 53.93.
Chinese athletes Su Xinyue (55.88) and Jiang Fengjing (55.70) taking the first two places with Li Tsai-yi of Chinese Taipei taking the bronze by hurling the disc to 55.32m.
In men’s pole vault, the Chinese again won the first two places with Xue Changrui (5.60m) and Lu Yao (5.20) taking the gold and silver while Korean Jin Min-Sub took the bronze scaling 5.20m. Kazakhstan’s Baurzhan Serikbayev also cleared 5.20m but declared fourth due to more number of failures than Yao and Min-Sub.
Francis impressive in qualifying rounds
The evening also witnessed Asian record-holder Samuel Francis (Qatar) sprinted with a remarkable 10.17s clocking on the second heat which increased anticipation for Thursday's ’s final in this marquee event.
Bahraini quarter-miler Ali Khamis jogged away to win the semi-finals in men’s 400m in yet another noteworthy 46.35 secs. He posted a national junior record – 46.25s – to win a bronze medal in the Arab championships at Doha, Qatar, recently and expected to dip further in tomorrow’s final.
As expected, China leads the medal tally with 2 gold and 2 silver medals followed by Japan (1-0-1) while India placed eighth with 2 bronze medals.
