Asian Junior Athletics Championships 2014 at Taipei
>> June 13, 2014
The ‘show-time for youth’ commenced at Taipei Municipal Stadium on Thursday morning (12 June) with Japanese school girl Kaori Kawazoe takes away the first gold medal on offer in junior women’s 10,000m race walk with a decent time of 50 minutes 38.05 secs. Twin sisters Diana (51:39.77) and Dana (52:13.42) Aidossova of Kazakhstan went home with other medals.
In the after-noon session, last year’s world youth championship silver medalist Bo-Kai Huang opened the medal hunt for China with a marvelous 5.25m clearance in pole vault. Triple jumpers Rong Wang (13.64m) and Xiao-Hong Li (13.62m) battled it out for the first two positions with Sri Lankan Vidusha Lakshani filled the podium on her third place leap of 12.87m.
The second Chinese sweep came in shot put where Xu Jia-Qi (16.50m) and Wang Ning-Yue (15.05m) did the trick for gold and silver medals. However what is surprised everyone was Indian record-holder Navjeet Kaur Dhillon’s determined effort to grab a bronze medal with a heave of 14.99m. Navjeet’s effort was commendable due to the fact that she had no time for any rest after an overnight flight or taking food and was lacking a training session to get a feel of the ground.
Izumida and Maslova shared the spoils in 5,000m
Japan’s Maki Izumida and Kyrgyzstan’s Daria Maslova were locked in to an unprecedented ‘dead-heat’ in junior women’s 5,000m race as they both timed an identical time of 16:18.35. As the photo-finish could not resolve determining the first place, both the runners were awarded with gold medals. North Korean Ji Hyang Kim got the bronze in 16:28.13.
Qatar’s World junior champion Ashraf Amjad El-Seify (79.71m) and World youth champion Ahmed Amgad Alsify (68.90m) had no opposition of anything worth as they were easily finished 1-2 in hammer throw. El-Seify however fell short of improving his meet mark of 80.85m that he registered while winning the title in the last edition held at Colombo, Sri Lanka, two years ago. He is holding the world junior record at 85.57m that he made while winning the World junior gold in Barcelona in 2012. His presence in Taipei hugely boosted the status of the championships in a great manner.
With three out of six titles already in their possession, the athletes from mainland China are leading the tables while Japan followed closely with 2 gold medals.
Ram. Murali Krishnan for AdrianSprints.com
