The Hindu : Sport / Athletics : Damayanthi Darsha for Asian GP meets

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, May 12, 2006

Sport

Sport - Athletics

Damayanthi Darsha for Asian GP meets

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: Reigning Asian champions Damayanthi Darsha of Sri Lanka, Song Aimin of China, Tatyana Efimenko of Kyrgyzstan and Anju George and Manjeet Kaur of India head the list of entries for the Asian Grand Prix meets to be held at Bangkok, Bangalore and Pune this month.

Darsha, the 200m champion at the Asian championships at Incheon last year and the 400m at the 2002 Busan Asian Games will compete in the 200m in the three-leg circuit.

Song Aimin, the most outstanding woman discus thrower in Asia for the past two seasons, who took a special prize in the circuit last year for her effort of 65.23m at Sidoarjo, Indonesia, once again heads the list in her event.

Efimenko, high jump gold winner at Busan as well as at the Asian meet at Incheon, will have Kazakhs Marina Aitova and Anna Ustinova to contend with apart from Chinese Gu Biwei. Manjeet Kaur will essentially be battling it out with her teammate Satti Geetha as she had done before prevailing at Incheon last year.

Opposition for Anju

Anju George will face opposition from Filipino Marestella Torres (personal best of 6.63m), who won the silver at Incheon, Chinese Liu Huahua (6.63m) and Kazakhstan's Olga Rypakova (6.60m) and Olessya Belayeva (6.50m).

The field will also include Asian Games 1,500m champion Tatyana Borisova of Kyrgyzstan who will compete in the women's 800m and another Busan champion, Feng Yun of China who will be the favourite in the women's 100m hurdles.

Easy pickings

With athletes from Japan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain once again staying away, the Asian circuit should provide some easy pickings for the Indian athletes, especially since two of the meets are being held at home. The meets will be held on May 18 (Bangkok), May 22 (Bangalore) and May 26 (Pune).

The events: Men: 100m, 400m, 800m, 3000m, 400m hurdles, high jump, long jump, shot put and javelin. Women: 200m, 400m, 800m, 100m hurdles, high jump, long jump, shot put and discus.

Other prominent foreign athletes entered for the circuit: Men: 400m: Fawzi Al-Shammari (Kuw, 2002 Asian Games gold), Prasanna Sampath Amarasekara (Sri, Asian silver), Rohan Pradeep Kumara (Sri, Asian Games bronze); 800m: Sajad Moradi (Iran, Asian bronze); 400m hurdles: Yevgeniy Melshenko (Kaz, Asian silver); Javelin: Sergey Voynov (Uzb, Asian Games bronze).

Women: 200m: Guzel Khubbieva (Uzb, Asian silver); 800m: Amira Zamirova (Uzb, Asian bronze); shot put: Zhang Guirong (Singapore, Asian silver).

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