Liu Xiang takes predicted win at East Asian Games in Macau (© Getty Images)
The 2006 Osaka World Athletics Tour meeting will be held this Saturday 6 May in Nagai Stadium, Osaka, Japan, the future site of the 2007 IAAF World Championships in Athletics.
MEN
Gatlin looking for fast times
Justin Gatlin, the current World and Olympic 100m champion, who has so far this season run anchor legs in the Mt SAC Relays, Kansas Relays and the Penn Relays, will running his first individual 100m race of the season in Osaka.
Only weeks ago, the World 100m and 200m gold medallist confirmed, “With no World Championships this year, running fast times is going to be even more important.... I’m the World champion – so of course I want that World record.”
Gatlin is a prohibitive favourite in Osaka, with his main challengers being Brian Lewis (USA), Eric Nkansah (GHA), and the Japanese, Shingo Suetsugu and Nobuharu Asahara. Their personal bests are 9.99, 10.00, 10.03 and 10.02 respectively. Gatlin has a best of 9.85 from when winning the Olympic title.
Liu Xiang – first race since injury
China’s reigning Olympic 110m Hurdles champion, Liu Xiang, who won his specialty in Osaka last year, is back in Nagai Stadium again. The 22-year-old has not raced since his 13.21 clocking on 2 November last year with which he easily secured the East Asian Games title. Then in early February, the 2005 World Championships silver medallist sprained his ankle a few days before the start of the domestic indoor season which subsequently also prevented him from running in the World Indoor Championships, Moscow, Russia, in March.
Xiang’s biggest challengers are Maurice Wignall (JAM), who has a personal best of 13.17 and won the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, and Arend Watkins (USA), who has a best of 13.23. The top Japanese are Satoru Tanigawa, a national record holder (13.39), and Masato Naito, a former national record (13.47) holder, who recorded a wind-assisted 13.45 last week in the Oda memorial meet.
Jackson versus Carter
Another 22-year-old global winner, in this case 2005 World champion Bershawn Jackson will be the favourite in the one lap hurdles. The 400m Hurdles gold medallist from Helsinki last summer has raced once this summer in his specialist event clocking 48.34 seconds on 22 April to show he has wintered very well. In Osaka, he will take on James Carter, 27, the World silver medallist. This fellow American is making his season’s debut.
The best Japanese 400m hurdler in the field is Kenji Narisako, who won his specialty in the Mt SAC Relays and the Shizuoka International. At Mt SAC Relays, Narisako was disappointed because he was not able to compete against the World Champion but will now get his chance on Saturday on ‘home soil’.
Japan’s best hurdler, Dai Tamesue, the Helsinki bronze medallist, is concentrating on flat racing this year, and so in Osaka will instead contest the 400m with Gary Kikaya (COD) and Leonard Byrd (USA), whose personal bests are 44.53 and 44.45 respectively. Another Japanese, Yuzo Kanemaru, last year’s high school sensation is also racing. The 18-year-old has a 200m best of 20.79 and at 400m, 45.47, from the last year and is improving rapidly every year.
Over 5000m, Martin Mathathi, who was third in the World Cross Country Championships in Fukuoka, takes on fellow Kenyan, 2001 World 10,000m champion Charles Kamathi.
Sawano should not to be discounted
Two 6m vaulters from Australia, Dmitri Markov, the 2001 World champion, and Paul ‘Budgie’ Burgess, look set to dominate the men’s Pole Vault. Markov won the silver medal in the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne this March, where Burgess no-heighted. But do not discount Jacob Pauli (USA), who won the Kansas Relays and finished third in the Drake Relays, or Japan’s Daichi Sawano, the national PV record holder at 5.83m, who was eighth in the World Championships last year. After finishing third at Mt SAC, Sawano won the Shizuoka International with 5.60m.
No Murofushi
Another 2001 World champion, Szymon Ziolkowski of Poland, the Hammer Throw gold medallist who also took the 2000 Olympic crown, will be in Osaka, but the disappointment for the crowd will be that Koji Murofushi, the 2004 Olympic champion will not be competing. Murofushi is starting his season late and will not compete until later this month, presumably because the most important competition for Asian athletes this season, the Asian Games, is in December in Doha. Thus the main challenger for Ziolkowski, who was third in Helsinki, is Libor Charfreitag, who was seventh in the Olympic Games and ninth in the World Championships in Helsinki.
WOMEN
Felix the outstanding favourite
Allyson Felix, 20, who his season has run an anchor 100m leg in the Mt SAC Relay, and won the individual 100m in the Kansas Relays in a personal best of 11.04, is also running the 100m in Osaka. Felix, the World 200m champion, is the outstanding favourite though she was only third last time out at 100m in a disappointing 11.75 at the Drake Relays. Her main challenger is another American Stephanie Durst, 24, who has a best of 11.24 at 100m from last year and ran a good indoor campaign this winter over 60m with a personal best of 7.25 seconds. Sakie Nobuoka, who ran 11.47 for 100m and 23.36 in Azusa and 23.37 in Shizuoka for the 200m, is the best Japanese.
In the women’s 5000m, Lucy Wangui and Evelyn Wambui, gold and silver medallist at the 10,000m at the Commonwealth Games, are the co-favourites. The best Japanese hope is Hitomi Niiya, who was 13th in the junior division of the World Cross Country Championships in Fukuoka.
Kym Howe of Australia, who already held the Commonwealth record of 4.61m coming into the 2006 season, won the Commonwealth Games title with a improvement of that mark by one centimetre. Her main challengers will be USA’s Kelli Suttle and Jillian Schwartz, who have bests of 4.67m and 4.60m respectively. Suttle won the Drake Relays in 4.33m, while Schwartz was second in the same competition. The best Japanese in the field is Ikuko Nishikori, who set a new national record of 4.36m in the Oda meet.
High quality hammer
The top women hammer throwers competing in Osaka are Poland’s Kamila Skolimowska, the 2000 Olympic gold medallist, Erin Gilreath of USA, who was 10th in the 2005 World Championships, and Germany’s Betty Heidler, who was fourth in the 2004 Olympic Games. More recently Gilreath won the Hammer Throw in the Penn Relays. The top Japanese challenger in the women’s Hammer Throw is Yuka Murofushi, the kid sister of Koji Murofushi. Yuka, like her older brother Koji, is national record holder.
Ken Nakamura for the IAAF
Featured athletes
Men
100m
Justin Gatlin (USA)
Brian Lewis (USA)
Eric Nkansah (GHA)
Shingo Suetsugu (JPN)
Nobuharu Asahara (JPN)
200m
Brian Dzingai (ZIM)
Daniel Batman (AUS)
Seth Amoo
400m
Leonard Byrd (USA)
Gary Kikaya (COD)
Dai Tamesue (JPN)
Yuzo Kanemaru (JPN)
5000m
Martin Mathathi (KEN)
Charles Kamathi (KEN)
John Kariuki (KEN)
110mH
Liu Xiang (CHN)
Maurice Wignall (JAM)
Arend Watkins (USA)
Masato Naito (JPN)
Satoru Tanigawa (JPN)
400mH
Bershawn Jackson (USA)
James Carter (USA)
Kenji Narisako (JPN)
PV
Paul Burgess (AUS)
Dmitri Markov (AUS)
Jacob Pauli (USA)
Daichi Sawano (JPN)
TJ
Konstadilnos Zalaggitis (GRE)
Hristos Meletoglou (GRE)
Colomba Fofana (FRA)
Kazuyoshi Ishikawa (JPN)
HT
Szymon Ziolkowski (POL)
Libor Charfreitag (SVK)
Andrey Vorontsov (BLR)
Women
100m
Allyson Felix (USA)
Stephanie Durst (USA)
Sakie Nobuoka (JPN)
400m
Asami Tanno (JPN)
Zuzanna Radecka (POL)
1500m
Sarah Jamieson (AUS)
Miho Sugimori (JPN)
Yuriko Kobayashi (JPN)
5000m
Evelyne Wambui (KEN)
Lucy Wangui (KEN)
Jane Wanjiku (KEN)
Philes Ongori (KEN)
Hitomi Niiya (JPN)
Yoshiko Fujinaga (JPN)
PV
Kym Howe (AUS)
Kellie Suttle (USA)
Jilian Schwartz (USA)
Ikuko Nishikori (JPN)
LJ
Bronwyn Thompson (AUS)
Olga Rublyova (RUS)
Rose Richmond (USA)
Maho Hanaoka (JPN)
Kumiko Ikeda (JPN)
HT
Kamila Skolimowska (POL)
Erin Gilreath (USA)
Betty Heidler (GER)
Yuka Murofushi (JPN)
