Asian Athletics Championships preview part-1

Indian athletes would be looking forward to an improved performance from their 2013 effort at home as they get down to another edition of the Asian Athletics Championships in Wuhan, China, from June 3 to 7.

After an encouraging Olympic year in 2012, Indian athletics has had two below-par years and it will require quite some effort in Wuhan for it to start looking up again in its attempt to aim for an impossible-looking medal in the Rio Olympic Games next year. Everyone talks about it without perhaps realizing how tough it has become to earn a medal for an Indian even at the Asian level.

There had been a steady decline in India’s performance in the biennial championships and even at home in Pune last time,  the country could only manage the fifth place in the medals tally with a haul of three gold, five silver and nine bronze medals.

Compare this with the four individual gold medals that P. T. Usha won in Jakrata in the 1985 edition of the championships which fetched the country 21 medals in all, 10 of them gold, and one gets an idea about the sliding standards.

There is great optimism this time, as expressed by Deputy Chief Coach Radhakrishnan Nair  on the eve of the team’s departure from New Delhi that India would return from the Chinese city with at least its gold medal tally doubled from last time.

A Chinese domain

Asian athletics is China’s domain. Of late there might have been a slight erosion of its dominance in the Asian Championships but that could have been more because of not fielding full strength teams rather than a fall in standards. True, the Chinese strength in women’s track events is no longer so pronounced as it used to be in the 1990s. The same goes for the men’s throws.

China will be without Su Bingtian, the first Asian of non-African descent to run the 100m below 10 seconds (at Eugene on May 30), Olympic bronze medal winning woman shot putter Gong Lijiao who is No. 2 in the world lists this season with 20.23m, long jumper Li Jinzhe, Asian Games champion, and world No. 5 this season with 8.26m, and Asian Games champion and Asian record holder jalevin thrower Zhao Qinggang, among their prominent stars in this edition of the championships.

The junior sprinting sensation from Japan, Yoshihide Kiryu who ran a wind-assisted 9.87 in Austin, Texas, this season and who holds a PB of 10.01s will also be missing from the line-up. He was expected to figure in the Asian Games last year but an injury robbed him of that chance.

Also missing would be Kazakhstan’s woman triple jumper Olga Rypakova, Olympic champion in 2012, who holds the top two marks this season in Asia at 14.48 and 14.38. Kazakhstan also would be without its Asian record holder and defending Asian champion in decathlon, Dmitry Karpov.

Despite the absence of these leading stars, the championships should provide good contests, especially with the World Championships in Beijing just over two months away and athletes likely to be looking for entry standards for the Worlds as well as Rio Olympics. Qualification for Olympics could be of greater significance for many of the lesser stars including those from India.

Mutaz Barshim ready to soar further

Leading the star parade from among 12 male and 11 female Asian Games champions would be the high jumping sensation, Mutaz Essa Barshim. The world-leading 24-year-old Qatari has cleared 2.41m outdoors and indoors this year. He is the defending Asian Games champion and World Indoor champion. He holds the Asian record at 2.43m. Younger brother Muamer Essa Barshim is a 2.28m high jumper who has cleared 2.23m this season.

Chinese Zhang Guowei, who cleared a PB of 2.38 to be No. 2 in the world lists this season (up to May 31, 2015) and to clinch the second place behind Mutaz Barshim in the Eugene Diamond League meeting, is the silver medallist from the last Asian Games. A terrific battle is on the cards in high jump.

Sixteen of the Asian champions from the Pune edition, eight men and as many women, would be defending their titles in Wuhan.

China, at home last time in Guangzhou in 2009, claimed 47 medals including 18 gold. In 2011 in Kobe, Japan forged ahead for the first time since 1983 with a collection 32 medals, 11 of them gold, to China’s 27 with 10 gold medals. China was back at the top at Pune in 2013 with 27 medals, 16 of them gold, with Bahrain taking second with five gold and Japan third with four.

(Read about India’s prospects in part-2)

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