Bangkok – 15 July 2023:
There was an interesting dual between India’s Murali Sreeshankar and Chinese Taipei’s Lin Yu-Tang as the long jump arena took the sheen away from other events once again on the fourth day evening here at Supachalasai National Stadium.
Under the scorching sun, Sreeshankar led the field with his opening jump of 8.10m. However, his joy was short-lived as Lin equaled the distance within a couple of minutes. China’s Zhang Mingkun, this year’s Asian indoor bronze medalist, logged 8.08m while taking his first round between the above two jumpers.
Sreeshankar snatched the lead briefly again with his third round 8.12m. However, Lin produced an astonishing jump in the fourth round as he hit the sand pit at an amazing 8.40m, which was surprisingly 28 cm more than his previous best. The Indian made a sincere effort to move farther but just managed a decent 8.37m leap in the final round to settle for silver. Although a bit disappointed, Sreeshankar was happy that he managed to qualify for next year’s Olympic Games in Paris with today’s performance. Mingkun got the bronze with his first-round mark of 8.08m. It was the second win for Lin in the Asian competitions this year after his first gold in the Asian Indoors at Astana.
Korea’s World 2022 Indoor High Jump Champion Woo Sang-Hyeok had seamless first attempt clearances till 2.28m where two other contestants, Sarvesh Anil Kushare from India and the host nation’s Tawan Kaeodam knocked the cross-bar thrice. Woo asked the bar to be raised to 2.33m thereafter but could not succeed to clear it this time. The Korean had a personal best of 2.35m in his name since Tokyo Olympics two years ago where he finished fourth.
Though Anil and Tawan cleared an identical 2.26m, the silver went in favour of the Indian as he had the least number of failures during the competition than the Thai jumper.
In the discus throw, China’s Tuergong Abuduaini improved his PB to 61.19 in the final round to snatch the gold from Eissa Zankawi of Kuwait, who hurled the disc to 60.23m. Malaysia’s Muhammad Irfan Shamshuddin, who was leading the competition until the fifth round with 59.63m, got the bronze. Shamshuddin was a silver medalist in the 2017 Asian Championships held at Bhubaneswar.
Qatar’s Mohamed Hemeida Bassem (48.64s) and Robyn Lauren Brown from the Philippines (57.50s) took the top spots in the 400m hurdles for Men and Women respectively.
The women’s heptathlon witnessed the first two positions from the previous edition of the championships held at Doha in 2017 replicated here as Yekaterina Voronina (Uzbekistan) and Swapna Barman (India) were returned to occupy the same spots in Bangkok. Voronina, the 2014 Asian Games champion garnered 6,098 points against Swapna, the 2018 Asian Games champion who collected 5,840 points for the silver. Japan’s Yuki Yamasaki completes the podium with 5,696 points.
The 4 x 400m mixed relay saw a thrilling win for India in 3:14.70 ahead of Sri Lanka (3:15.41) and Japan (3:15.71). The Indian team consisting of Rajesh Ramesh, Aishwarya Mishra, Amoj Jacob and Subha Venkatesan brought excitement to the fans as the lead was keep changing intermittently in every leg until Subha, the anchor for the winning team was crossing the finish line with a comfortable margin.
Tomorrow (16) will be the last day of the five-day championships which ensures every winner here gains an automatic place to enter the World Championships to be held at Budapest next month.
Ram. Murali Krishnan for Asian Athletics
