19th Asian Athletics Championships Kobe – Athletics India – News – Harwant, Jaisha and Bharat Inder brought bronze medals for India / By Ram. Murali Krishnan /

Kobe, Japan – 8 July 2011 – It was the day of the bronze for India as Harwant Kaur (discus throw), O.P. Jaisa (1500m) and Bharat Inder Singh (decathlon) finished third in their respective events while Krishna Poonia gave disappointment to her Indian fans from the throwing circle in the 19th Asian Athletics Championships here today.

Decathletes never drew much attention from the track buffs.  But those who assembled on the Kobe Universiade Memorial Stadium here on Friday evening watched with enthusiasm the nail-biting fight between Bharat Inder Singh of India and Iranian Hadi Sepehrzad in the 10-events-match.   

Bharat, the new national record setter in this event last month, was trailing 13 points behind the Iranian after the ninth event—javelin throw.  It was indeed a great show as he was otherwise far behind in most of the time.  However an impressive 59.46m throw with the spear brought him 730 points and thus helped him make amends to his slips in other events earlier.   However he has fared very poorly in the last event, 1500m, got only 434 points for his 5:23.04 clocking to finish third overall with 7,358 points.

Sepehrzad won the event with a tally of 7506 points while local man Akihiko Nakamura was in silver place at 7,478 points.  Akihiro, was third till the beginning of 1500m, clocked a superior 4:18.84 which earned him a good 820 points and one place higher than that of Singh.

Krishna Poonia, the reigning Commonwealth Games champion in discus throw, finished outside the podium in her favourite event.  China’s Taifeng Sun pulled an upset victory over her teammate Ma Xuejun in this event.  Sun opened with a noteworthy 60.89m, which remained as the only mark over 60m on Friday evening, which fetch the coveted gold to her.   Ma Xuejun and Poonia were expected to dominate the event and clash for the title.  However Xuejun settled with a silver medal with an effort of 59.67m while Krishna landed outside the podium in fourth place as the disc hit a below-par 56.23m on the sixth and last attempt.  The other Indian, Harwant Kaur got the bronze with a throw of 57.99m.  With today’s win Chinese throwers had won the women’s discus throw crown for a record 16th time in 19 meetings.   

Krishna had been the second upset for Indians in less than 24 hours as our young 400m hurdler and medal hope Durgesh Kumar Pal was crashed out in the semi-finals of the World Youth Championships currently running at Lille, France, last night.

Metric miler O.P. Jaisha brought another bronze for India as she finished third in women’s 1500m with a time of 4:21.41 behind Bahrain’s Genzeb Shumi Regaza (4:15.91) and Vietnamese Truong Thanh Hang (4:18.40).    Kuwaiti Mohammad Al-Azemi took the honours in the men’s race in 3:42.49 ahead of fancied Iranian Sajjad Moradi (3:43.30).

Uzbek veteran Guzel Khubbieva ascertained her position as a fastest woman on the continent by clocking 11.39 secs to win the women’s 100m.   Chinese Su Bingtian takes the men’s crown in 10.21 secs.

Yousef Ahmed Masrahi of Saudi Arabia (45.79 secs) and Olga Tereshkova of Kazakhstan (52.37s) had won the 400m for men and women respectively.

Earlier in the morning the Indian 4x100m relay quartet of Ritesh Anand, Krishna Kumar Rane, Shameer Mon and Rahamatulla Molla clocked a modest 40.13 secs to finish fourth in the first heat and qualified for final as fastest losers.  

Our 400m hurdlers Satinder Singh (50.95s) and Joseph G. Abraham (50.94s) have qualified for the finals after finished third in their respective qualifying heats.

Sushmita Singha Roy was trailing second after 4 events at the end of the first day’s competition in women’s heptathlon with 3,232 points.  Wassana Winatho from Thailand leads the fray with 3,496 pts.

Army lad Ramdas Ramachandran (8:46.08) missed the bronze in men’s 3000m steeplechase won by Kamal Ali Abubaker of Qatar in 8:30.23.   

/ Ram. Murali Krishnan /