News31 Jul 2007


Asian Championships Review – China’s “B” team prevails

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Xu Shaoyang takes the win in the women's Discus Throw at the Asian Champs in Amman (© Ayyob Abdulla)

Amman, JordanBarring Li Ling who eventually no-heighted in the women's pole vault competition, China did not enter a single athlete, who had won the World Championships trials back home in the 17th Asian Athletics Championships which concluded in Amman on Sunday (29 July).

Yet, when the final medals tally was worked out, China was once again on top of the heap. With seven gold medals, China had less than half of what it had in the last edition in Incheon, South Korea. But then, it was an achievement all the same; a proclamation that the country's all-round strength and depth, especially in women's events, remains unmatched in the continent. The Chinese women contributed five of the gold medals this time compared to 11 out of 15 two years ago.

It was the first time that China had entered such a lowly-ranked team in the continental championships, with not a single defending champion or for that matter an Asian Games champion in the fray. Barring the Javelin Throw, China did not enter an athlete in men's throwing events. With the Osaka World Championships just a month away, China and Japan preferred to field second-string teams while many other countries, notably Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, also kept their top-ranked athletes away.

The lack of quality apart, what stood out was the depleted fields in many events, notably women's distance events, jumps, heptathlon and relays. Naturally, the lesser-ranked countries shared the spoils, but there could be little satisfaction for them when they sit down and review their chances from a long-term perspective.

Heat, wind and altitude a factor

The heat wave that hit Amman during the course of the Championships started subsiding only after the meet. Coupled with the altitude of Amman (773m), the conditions were harsh for the middle distance and distance runners.

"Even after running a race of this pace (4:25.67), I felt totally exhausted," said Indian Sinimole Paulose who won the 1500 metres. "The winds made it that much tougher."

The elevation factor, though it must have helped the sprinters, left even them breathless and uncomfortable.

"The conditions were difficult. There was difficulty in breathing; the throat and lips were getting dry," said Sri Lankan Susanthika Jayasinghe who registered a sprint double, but felt that she would have been better off with a more competitive field including Asian Games 100m champion Guzel Khubbieva of Uzbekistan and Asian Games 200m champion Rakia Al-Ghasara of Bahrain. Al-Ghasara, though initially entered, pulled out at the last minute.

From nowhere to Asian champion and record holder in one week

The man who bettered the Asian 100m record, Samuel A. Francis of Qatar, also complained of severe exhaustion and dehydration after running an electrifying 9.99 seconds in the final, fifth best on the season's lists then.

In a meet in which the sprints and most of horizontal jumps were wind-affected, Francis was the lucky one to get a legal wind of 0.9m/s. He had earlier set a championship record of 10.18 seconds in the opening round, with the wind standing still.

That was the time people took note of the tall Qatari, who had come into the Championships with no great reputation or recent feats to back him up but only as a talented 20-year-old sprinter from Nigeria, who had only this year made his debut for Qatar.

Francis is the first African sprint "import" into a Gulf country. He had been languishing towards the bottom of the top-20 sprinters at home when he was picked by the Qatar federation and provided expert guidance. His transformation from "just another talented sprinter" to an Asian record holder has come within a short span of time.

In April this year, Francis finished third in the 100 metres in the GCC Military Championships in Doha behind Saudi Arabian Yahya Ibrahim Hassan Habeeb and Qatari Alwaleed Abdullah in 10.35 seconds. A month later, he was only seventh and last in a 100m heat in the Doha Super Grand Prix.

In a little over two months from then, he is not only the Asian champion but also the Asian record holder. Significantly, Francis beat Abdullah in the final while Habeeb, the Asian Games champion, did not come through the semi-finals. Defending champion Yahya Al-Kahes ended up last in 10.44, a season best! No one, bar Japanese Ueno Masahide who clocked a wind-aided 10.16 in the semifinals, and returned a personal best of 10.26s in the final, managed to challenge Francis. After the 50-metre mark Francis was never threatened and in the end there was nearly a three-metre gap between him and the Japanese.

Japanese Koji Ito's Bangkok Asian Games mark of 10.00 is the one that will go out of the record books once ratification procedures are completed. Needless to say, from now on Francis will be the centre of attraction at any meet in Asia. And his success must have opened up new avenues for other talented Nigerian sprinters.

A leaps of quality

In a meet in which top-level performances were rare, Kazakh Olga Rypakova jumped a national record of 14.69 metres in Triple Jump, just four centimetres off the Asian record set by Chinese Xi Limei in June, to be the best performer in the women's section. It was the sixth best mark of the season and the 22-year-old Kazakh was 66 centimetres ahead of Chinese junior Sha Li. It was a championship record.

Rypakova completed a double with her Triple Jump victory as she had earlier beaten India's Anju George in the Long Jump by one centimeter and that too on her last jump. With a 6.65m in the opening round, George looked likely to retain her title, but that was not to be. Initially the Indian's jump was recorded with an assisting wind speed of 4.3m/s but in the revised results she was credited with a wind speed of 1.3m/s. That meant that she had made the grade for the Osaka World Championships, the target that she had set out to achieve. Rypakova's 6.66 was aided by a wind of 2.4m/s.

The women's High Jump also provided a high-level competition with Tatyana Effimenko of Kyrgyzstan claiming the gold at 1.94 metres, equalling the championship record, and five others going over 1.88 metres.

Tactical middle distance affairs

The middle distance events were expectedly tactical races in which some ordinary timings were returned. The Saudis beat the Qataris in the waiting game. Mohammed Al-Salhi, who is among the top 20 runners in the world lists this season, took off from 300 metres out to push Iranian Sajjad Moradi and Qatari Ali Abubaker Kamal behind in the 800 metres while Mohammed Othman Shaween out-kicked the same opponents in the 1500 metres for the gold. Asian Games champion Dahame Najem Bashir, unable to respond on the back straight when the others took off, came 12th in the metric mile.

"Dahame was not strong today", said Othman. "I knew I had the finishing speed over the last 200 metres," said the Saudi who is a 3:38 runner.

Saudis and Indians impress

Saudi Arabia's other three gold medals came through steeplechaser Al Ahmed Al-Amri, long jumper Mohamed Salman Al-Khuwalidi (8.16w), a late entry, and the men's 4x400m relay team. The man who was missed was the shot putter, Sultan Mubarak Al-Hebshi who had posted an Asian record of 20.61m in the first week of July. In his absence, Indian Navpreet Singh, competing for the first time this season, won with a 19.70m.

Another Indian who impressed, not so unexpectedly, was triple jumper Renjith Maheswary. His wind-aided 17.19 went unchallenged though Kim Duk-Hyun came up with a last-round jump of 17.00 metres, a season best for the Korean. Missing from the field were Chinese Zhong Minwei and Gu Junjie, both 17-metre-plus jumpers this season and Kazakh Roman Valiyev, a last-minute pull-out who had won the silver in the Doha Asian Games. The Indian women contributed the other three gold medals, Chitra Soman winning the 400 metres, Sinimole Paulose the 1500 metres and the longer relay team holding off a Japanese threat.

Japanese below and Vietnamese above par

Given the conditions, the Japanese were well below par in most of the events. Not so the Vietnamese. Truong Thanh Hang had her maiden 800 metres title, upsetting Paulose but the Indian had the last laugh in the metric mile. Also picking up her maiden titles was Bahrain's 19-year-old Karima Saleh Jassem who completed the distance double with great ease, though the field was nothing to talk about. Just four runners started the 5,000 metres and three competed in the 10,000 metres.

One men’s champs record

The lone championship record in the men's section came in Discus Throw, with Iranian Ehsan Hadadi touching 65.38 metres. Only in June he had registered an Asian record of 67.95 metres and he was the odds on favourite in Amman.

Jordan does marvellously in 3 weeks considering that  organisers usually have 2 years to prepare

Obviously for a meet that was arranged at very short notice, with less than a month at the disposal of the Jordan federation after Lebanon pulled out as the host because of the security situation in that country, there were bound to be organizational glitches.

"Getting warmed up at a nearby practice ground and then coming over here and competing was tough," said Susanthika Jayasinghe.

The tunnel, used for football matches, was the busiest area in the stadium, with the athletes waiting to go in before competition and medals ceremony and officials milling around amidst volunteers. The lack of rooms at the stadium meant that there was no space for technical officials or recorders to work and no media room. Worse for the media, there was no communication facility at the stadium for the first two days of the meet.

"We had to appreciate that they had just three weeks to prepare while normally a city gets two years before hosting a championship," said a top Asian Athletics Association (AAA) official. "To that extent, Jordan did a good job of conducting this meet."

The IAAF President Lamine Diack, who attended the AAA Congress, witnessed the final day's action, and the presence of World Pole Vault record holder Sergey Bubka, now an IAAF Council Member, generated tremendous interest among the participants and handful of fans.

The next edition of the championships will be held in Guangzhou, China, in 2009.

By an IAAF Correspondent

Click below to read each day's competition report -

- Asian Championships – Final Day
 
- Asian Championships - Day Four

- Asian Championships - Day Three

- Asian Championships - Day Two

- Asian Championships - Day One

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