Seema Antil
Indian athletes performed miserably only winning silver and a bronze medal in the first leg of the Asian Grand Prix series at Jiaxing, China.
Middle distance runner Ghamanda Ram won a silver and discus thrower Seema Antil managed a bronze for India. But the Chinese athletes dominated the opening day of the Asian Grand Prix Series’ first leg here. Ghamanda Ram was outrun by Asian Games champion Sajad Moradi of Iran in a slow race.
The outstanding performance put up by an Indian athlete was by woman triple jumper Mayookha Johny. She recorded a personal best 13.71m, but that did not prove sufficient for a medal. It was just 1cm short of M A Prajusha’s national mark set during the Commonwealth Games at New Delhi last October, but missed out podium finish, signing off fourth.
Ram secured the silver in the 800m and was just a fraction of a second (0.22s) behind the reigning Asian Games gold-medalist Sajad Moradi of Iran, who won the gold with a moderate timing of 1:50.47s. Chinese athlete Yang Xiaofei took the bronze after recording1:50.84s.
Ghamanda Ram’s compatriot, Sajeesh Joseph in the fray, finished fifth with a timing of 1:51.62s.
In women’s discus throw, Antil threw the disc to 49.77m for the bronze medal behind China’s Yang Fei (58.01m) and Lin Xiaojing (51.52m).
The Other decent Indian performers of the day amongst men were Bibin Dev who came fifth in triple jump with 16.19m, Mahan Singh sixth in long jump with 7.35m and amongst women were Suman Devi finishing fifth in javelin throw with 45.93m.
The Chinese were 1-2 in women’s triple jump with Li Yanmei (13.98m) and Xie Limei (13.93m) taking the top spots with Uzbekistan’s Aleksandra Kotlyarova taking home the bronze medal with an effort of 13.80m.
China’s Chen Qiang (10.38 secs) was the fastest man while veteran Guzel Khubbieva of Uzbekistan (11.46 secs) brought herself the honour in the women’s section.
Tags: Asian Grand Prix, Athletes, Athletics, China, Ghamanda Ram, India, Seema Antil
