19. Asian Athletics Championships/Kobe – Athletics India – News – Mayookha improved her national mark in triple jump to qualify for world championships – / Ram. Murali Krishnan /

Kobe, Japan – 9 July 2011 – Mayookha Johny was once again on the limelight.  After her incredible gold winning show on the first day in long jump, Mayookha added a bronze medal to her kitty in triple jump with a brilliant 14.11m national record on the 3^rd day of Asian Athletics Championships here on Saturday.

Mayookha become the first Indian woman to breach the milestone 14m mark in triple jump when jumped to 14.02m during the Asian Grand Prix series held in China in May, this year.  She added 1 cm to her national record in third round here by landing at 14.03m.  Afterwards she leapt to an excellent 14.11m in the next round, which assured her the bronze medal and a berth in World Championships to be held at Daegu, Korea, next month.   It was, however, just 3 cm short of the silver winning performance of Uzbek jumper Valeriya Kanatova (14.14m).  China's Xie Limei, Doha Asiad victor and Guangzhou Asian Games silver medallist, took the top spot with a season's best 14.54m. 

Earlier in the evening, reigning Asian champion Om Prakash Singh finished third in men's shot put.  Om Prakash, the lone Indian gold medallist in Guangzhou two years ago, tossed the iron ball to 19.47m for the bronze medal.  Chinese-Taipei's Chang Ming-Huang heaved the shot to a new championship distance of 20.14m while Zhang Jun of China hit 19.77m to take the gold and silver medals respectively.    The second Indian entrant in this event, Saurabh Vij, finished fourth with 18.72m.

Two other Indian athletes, heptathlete Sushmita Singha Roy and hurdler Joseph Abraham, also missed the bronze medal by finishing fourth in their respective events.   Sushmita, after trailing in second place at the end of first day fared badly in second day's events and thus tabulated a paltry 5179 points.   Thailand's Wassana Winatho won the event with 5710 points.

Joseph Abraham, last year's Asian Games gold medallist, was not in good shape today and thus finished fourth in 400m hurdles by clocking a moderate 50.89 secs.   His teammate and Inter-State champion Satinder Singh was sixth in much slower 51.93 secs.  Japanese duo of Takatoshi Abe (49.64) and Yuta Imazeki (50.22) were 1-2, while Chieh Chen of Taipei completes the podium in 50.39s.

Distance runners Kavita Raut (16:23.06) and Suriya Loganathan (17:19.44) have been finished eighth and ninth in women's 5000m.   Suresh Kumar finished sixth (14:05.64) in the men's race.  As expected, athletes from Bahrain won both the titles with championship records.

/ Ram. Murali Krishnan /

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