Asian Grand Prix Series - PREVIEW

There is an air of expectancy as the three-leg Asian Grand Prix circuit is poised to make a start at Suzhou, China, on Saturday, 23 May. The other two legs will also be hosted by China, the second one in Kunshan on 27 May and the final meet in Hong Kong on 30 May.

All three fixtures of the 2009 Asian GP – Suzhou, Kunshan and Hong Kong – are part of a select group of Area meetings at which points can be acquired by athletes to qualify for the IAAF / VTB Bank World Athletics Final, to be held on 12-13 September in Thessaloniki, Greece.

The standout names entered for the series are Song Aimin of China, who was fourth at the Beijing Olympics and is the current world season leader in the women's Discus Throw, and her compatriot Shi Dongpeng, the 110m Hurdler who was a finalist at the 2003 and 2007 World champs.

As well as these two top names the Asian Athletics Association (AAA) has managed to attract a fairly formidable entry list, especially in the field events, for this year’s continental Grand Prix series which is being staged a month earlier than usual.

It can therefore be assumed that competition will be of a high enough level to enable many Area athletes to achieve qualification standards for the 12th IAAF World Championships in Athletics, Berlin, Germany (15 to 23 Aug). The meets will also provide an opportunity for the teams to aim for the standards in the relay events to make it to the World Champs.

China, Kazakhstan and to a lesser extent Japan have entered some of their best athletes. Athletes from Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are once again conspicuous by their absence. Indian athletes who managed to make a good impression last year with a bagful of medals will find the going tough this time around.

The prize money structure has remained from the previous two years, gold: 1500 dollars, silver: 800 dollars and bronze: 500 dollars. There will be 17 events including eight in the women’s section.

A look at some of the key contests that should develop through the circuit:

MEN

100m: The presence of Naoki Tsukahara should give the circuit the kind of stature that it might have been missing in the sprints in the previous years. The 24-year-old Japanese tops the Asian season lists with the personal best 10.13 clocked in Osaka while winning the 100 metres in the IAAF World Athletics Tour meet (9 May).

His 10.16 in the second round of the Beijing Olympics gave Tsukahara second place behind Qatari Samuel Francis in last year’s Asian lists while he had a 10.15 in 2007.

The Asian Games silver medallist in Doha looks to be in great form and that should be bad news for Chinese Wen Yongyi who had swept the Asian GP circuit in 2006 and might have been looking to do the same this time too. Thai Sittichai Suwonprateep, Vietnamese Nguyen Van Huynh and Indonesian Lumain Fernando are the other prominent contenders.

400m: Zimbabwe’s Lloyd Zvasiya is the only prominent non-Asian entry even though this year’s circuit was expected to attract a lot more from outside the continent having been declared ‘open’. Though he has a PB of 45.51, clocked back in 2003, he could only run 49 seconds last year!!! Twenty-one-year-old Chinese Liu Xiaosheng could be the man to beat then, with Sri Lankan Rohita Pushpakumara and Indian Bibin Mathew expected to provide stiff challenge.

110m Hurdles: Shi Dongpeng, the fifth place finisher in the 2007 World Champs is yet to emerge out of the shadows of Liu Xiang, should remain unchallenged, even though he only has a season best 13.48 (second in Osaka on 9 May).

Team-mate Xie Wenjun, just 18, but with a bag of two silver medals from last year’s circuit could be the man closest to Shi Dongpeng who was an Olympic semi-finalist last year, and Japanese Yukito Irie should be another challenger.

High Jump: Asian champion Lee Hup Wei of Malaysia will have to contend with Kazakh Sergey Zasimovich. The latter had won two of three titles in 2007, but with 2.22m leaps in Fukuroi and Osaka (5th), both this month, Lee should have the edge over the Kazakh.

Indian Hari Shankar Roy has touched early form as indicated by his 2.21 in the Indian Grand Prix meet in Chennai this month and should be aiming for a higher mark in his quest towards World Championships qualification.

Triple Jump: Perhaps the best contest among all men’s events should develop here, what with a clutch of top-ranked performers expected to cross swords. Asian Games champion Li Yanxi of China, who was 10th in the Olympic final last summer and has a 17.30m PB (Beijing qualification) takes on Roman Valiyev of Kazakhstan, and another Kazakh, Yevgeniy Ektov, who reached a personal best 17.07 last year while winning the Korat leg, are in the line-up. None are yet in 17m form but when you throw in Korean Kim Deok-Hyung, who has the best mark among the contestants here for the season (16.73m), you get an idea about the way the medals can swing.

WOMEN

100m: At 33, Guzel Khubbieva is a veteran, though her hunger for success has not diminished. The Uzbek, who swept the sprint titles last year in the circuit, should start the favourite once again. Her main opposition could come from Kazakhstan’s Natlya Ivoninskaya.

400m: The two Kazakhs, Olga Tereshkova and Marina Maslenko, had their task made easy when Indians Mandeep Kaur and Chitra Soman pulled out. The Indians have hit a ‘low’ this season and there aren’t immediate replacements named in an event where India has had a major hold for several years.

800m: Vietnam's Truong Thanh Hang was unmatched in the 1500 metres last year while winning all the three legs. This time, in the shorter distance, she could find a horde of contenders of almost equal capability. The odd woman out, if one could call her that, is Chinese Liu Qing, the only sub-two-minute runner in the fray (1:59.74 in 2005). Her current form does not indicate anything close to sub-two, however. The rest, Margarita Matsko and Viktoriya Yalovestyeva of Kazakhstan, Irina Moroz of Uzbekistan and Sushma Devi of India are in the 2:03-2:04 bracket. It could be anybody’s race.

High Jump: A top-class field with little to choose from among the leading six. Kazakhstan’s Anna Ustinova had swept the three legs last year, two of them at 1.91m and the last one 1.86m. With the 2002 Asian Games champion and joint continental record-holder Tatyana Effimenko (1.97) joining the battle, it could be a tougher task for Ustinova. Anyone else from among the rest four, Yeketerina Yevsyeva (Kazakhstan), Svetlana Radzivil (Uzbekistan), Nadiya Dusanova (Uzbekistan) and Zheng Xingjuan (China) can upset the calculations of the top two.

Discus Throw: The traditional battle-ground for the Chinese and Indians. This time around, the Indians, Krishna Poonia and Harwant Kaur, are struggling to find the kind of form that saw them touch great heights in the Olympic year (only to disappoint in Beijing) while the Chinese, Song Aimin, the Asian Games champion in Doha, is in top form, as could be gauged by her 64.83 metres at Zhaoqing last month that put her on top of the world season's lists.

Song Aimin is very much the star of at least the women's section of this Asian GP Series, given that she was fourth in the Beijing Olympics, and the season before was seventh at the World championships in Osaka.

The other Chinese, Li Yanfeng, has crossed 58 metres this season, something that Poonia has also achieved.

By an IAAF Correspondent