|
|
|
| Results: Suzhou | Kunshan | Hong Kong |
|
Asian Grand Prix
2009- Hong Kong Ten sweep series  Ten
finished with the distinction of having won all the
three legs. They were: Men: Su Bingtian (China,
100m), Mohammed Al-Azemi (Kuwait, 800m), Surendra
Kumar Singh (India, 3000m/5000m) and Kim Deok-Hyung
(Korea, Triple Jump); Women: Guzel Khubbieva
(Uzbekistan, 100m), Margarita Matsko (Kazakhstan,
800m), Natalya Ivoninskaya (Kazakhstan, 100m
Hurdles), Xie Limei (China, Triple Jump), Gong
Lijiao (China, Shot Put) and Song Aimin (China,
Discus).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 final leg produced a series of reversals for some of the more established athletes in the circuit, apart from Shi Dongpeng. Kazakh Sergey Zasimovich scored over Asian champion Lee Hupe Wei of Malaysia in High Jump, scaling over 2.28m that put him in joint seventh place in the season lists. The Malaysian cleared 2.24m just as he had done in the previous two legs. Indian Hari Sankar Roy had his best showing in the circuit, a 2.20m fetching him the bronze. Xie Wenjun, 42 days shy of his 19th birthday, scored his first victory over his Chinese team-mate Shi Dongpeng in the men’s 110m Hurdles as the curtain came down on the three-leg Asian Grand Prix circuit here on Saturday (30). Having played second fiddle to his more experienced team-mate through the first two legs, Xie Wenjun pipped him 13.63 to 13.69 to proclaim his arrival in the big league. A former National junior champion, Xie Wenjun had finished third in the National championships in Yulin a fortnight ago, with Shi Dongpeng coming second. Twenty-five-year-old Shi Dongpeng, a fifth-place finisher at the 2007 IAAF World Championships, was one of five athletes who could not make a clean sweep of the three legs after having been in the running at the end of the second leg in Kunshan. Two others had failed by the end of the second leg.  Indian
Bibin Mathew, after having settled for the silver in
the earlier legs, scored over Chinese Liu Xiaosheng
in a photo-finish in the men’s 400m. Both were
credited with 46.76, with the thousandth of a second
reading showing the Indian just ahead at 46.766 to
46.769. This was the first major title at the
continental level for the 22-year-old Indian.Chinese Taipei’s Chang Ming-Huang wrested the Shot Put title back from Indian Om Prakash Singh with a throw of 19.11m, the poorest winning mark in the circuit. The Indian, who has a best of 19.74m this season, could manage only 18.54m while Uzbekistan’s Grigoriy Kamulya got into the medals for the first time by taking the bronze with 18.51m. Chinese Qin Qiang, who had convincingly won the men’s javelin titles at Suzhou and Kunshan, fouled his first attempt today and then pulled out, apparently because of an injury. The beneficiary was Korean Park Jae-Myong, the continental leader for the season (83.10m), who nailed the gold at an unimpressive 74.45m. Margarita Matsko clocked her and Asia’s second best for the season in the women’s 800m, winning in 2:02.93. She had won in Kunshan in 2:02.83. The women’s High Jump produced a new winner in Chinese Zheng Zhingjuan, with the 
betterknown Sevtlana Radzivil, Tatyana Effimenko, Nadezhda Dussanova and Anna Ustinova taking a back-seat. Thai Noengrothai Chaipetch sneaked in with a bronze with a 1.88m.Chinese Xie Limei triple-jumped 14.25m, Asia’s top mark for the season. As in the previous two legs, she did not have any opposition worth the name. Chinese Song Aimin was untroubled while winning the women’s Discus gold with a 62.91m throw, but she was not as towering as she was over the past week. Indians Krishna Poonia (57.53m) and Seema Antil (56.88m) took their customary silver and bronze, but must be wondering what it takes to match the Chinese in the event. |
 Asian
Grand Prix 2009- Kunshan 2nd legKunshan, May 27: China continue to dominate while Kazak athletes sets new Asian leading performances in the second leg of Asian AA Grand Prix. Host China won 7 gold medals to top the medal
tally while Kazakhstan finished 2nd with 3 gold
medals earned by its women athletes. Margarita Matsko, Asian All star champion from
Kazakhstan set another Asian leading performance in
the women's 800m with a new personal best of
2:02.83s. Another Kazak athlete Natalya Ivoniskaya
set Asian leading performance in the women's 100m
hurdles with a time of 13.11s beating Sun Yawei for
the second time in the series. |
|
Song dominates as Asian Grand Prix kicks off in Suzhou The world leader this season with 64.83m, Song reached 63.91ms and that effort dwarfed the field which contained the top three Indians. Krishna Poonia could manage only 57.26m as against her season best of 58.95k. Seema Antil, struggling to come back into the kind of form that took her past the 64-metre mark in 2004, after a lean season last year, recorded a season best 55.94m that was only good enough for third. Also living up to his stature was Chinese 110m high hurdler Shi Dongpeng who won in 13.58, a tenth of a second outside his season best. He was given a good fight over the hurdles by 18-year-old team-mate Xie Wenjun, but class and experience prevailed in the end. Chinese javelin thrower Qin Qiang nailed a victory with a personal best 80.24m that put him among the top 15 in the world for the season. The 26-year-old Chinese had, incidentally, registered his previous best of 80.21m at the very same venue during the trials for the World Championships in 2007. He is now within the ‘B’ standard (78.00) for the Berlin World Championships. In a close contest in the men’s 800m, Kuwait’s Mohammed Al-Azemi prevailed over Iranian Sadjad Moradi, 1:48.64 to 1:48.67 with two places behind them, Chinese Li Xiangyu and Indian Prakash Verma, coming under 1:49. In the women’s High Jump, 21-year-old Uzbek, Nadiya Dussanova, scaled a personal best 1.95m to take the victory against a tough field. Yeketerina Yevseyeva (Kazakhstan) and Svetlana Radzivil (Uzbekistan) took the minor medals at 1.93m and 1.91m respectively but the surprising part was Anna Ustinova of Kazakhstan failing to reach the podium, finishing joint sixth with 2002 Asian Games champion Tatyana Effimenko of Kyrgyzstan at 1.84m. 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. |
|
Asian Grand Prix Series
2009 - PREVIEW Hong Kong, China - 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. AGP 2009 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. The prize money structure is as follows, 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 : www.iaaf.org ) |
|
|
World
No 3, Gong Lijiao of China remained undefeated in
the women's shot put with a throw of 19.25m. In the
men's section India's Om Prakash Singh avenged his
defeat at Suzhou by Chang of TPE with a throw of
19.48m. Chang managed 19.28m. Caravan of Asian
Athletes now will move to Hong Kong for the final
leg of the Asian AA Grand Prix series 2009.