The course was repetitive and the weather not helpful. That combined yesterday for a very ordinary winning performance from Zhou Chunxiu in the women's marathon at the Asian Games.
Zhou completed the seaside Corniche course -- where the runners compete over the same loop four times until just before the finish -- in 2 hours, 27 minutes and three seconds.
That was nearly 12 minutes behind Paula Radcliffe's world-best time of 2:15.25 set in London in 2003, and eight minutes behind the Asian record held by Japan's Mizuki Noguchi.
PHOTO: AP
Zhou blamed the conditions.
"The weather was not good; it was really windy," Zhou said, adding that she thought the course was "absolutely not comfortable -- it made me exhausted."
Two Japanese runners took the other medals -- Kiyoko Shimahara in second in 2:30.34 and Kayoko Obata, who finished just four second behind Shimahara.
Scheduling conflicts from other marathons around this time as qualifiers for next year's world championships meant that the race attracted only 10 runners, nine of whom finished, with Maria Pia Nehme of Lebanon pulling out of the race with an undisclosed injury.
At the athletics stadium, gold medal favorite Olga Tereshkova of Kazakhstan took control in the back straight and led easily over the final 100m in the first heat of the 400m.
She finished in 53.30 seconds, the fastest qualifier for today's final.
Alwaleed Abdulla a Abdulla of Qatar was the fastest qualifier in the men's 100m, setting a personal best of 10.37 seconds despite easing up at the end of his semi-final. East Asian Games champion Hu Kai of China failed to qualify for the final, which is to be held later yesterday.
Most of the attention yesterday was focused on the men's soccer quarter-finals which included a big matchup between North Korea and South Korea.
Winning would be a major prize for either country. The last time the Koreas played each other in soccer was in November last year, and the North won 2-0 in Macau at the East Asian Games.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier