Story by Colin Tung/Red Sports

Guangdong Olympic Stadium, China, Thursday, November 12, 2009 – Singaporeans Poh Seng Song and Muhd Amirudin Bin Jamal clocked 10.85 seconds and 10.88 seconds respectively in the 100m heats on the first day of competition at the 18th Asian Athletics Championships in Guangdong, China, which started on Tuesday, 10 November, and ends on Saturday, 14 November.

Poh finished sixth out of eight runners in his heat which was won by Al Harthi Barakat of Oman in 10.51s while Amirudin finished eighth in a heat won by Lai Chun Ho of Hong Kong in 10.62s. Both of them failed to qualify for the semi-finals.

The men’s 100m was eventually won by 22-year-old Zhang Peimeng of China in 10.28s in the final held yesterday. Naoki Tsukahara of Japan and Guo Fan of China won the silver and bronze in 10.32s and 10.37s respectively.

There were no Singaporeans in action on the second day of competition but today – the third day – saw Singaporeans competing in the women’s pole vault, men’s long jump and men’s 4x100m relay.

In the women’s pole vault, Rachel Yang failed on all her three attempts at 3.60m. China swept the gold and silver medals in this event through Li Caixia and Wu Sha who posted heights of 4.30m and 4.15m respectively.

In the men’s long jump final that wrapped up only a couple of hours ago, it was the same story for Singaporean Matthew Goh who also disappointingly posted no mark on all his three jumps. 20-year-old Li Jin Zhe of China, with his penultimate effort of 8.16m, won the gold over Alsaba Hussein Taher A. and Yu Zhen Wei of Saudi Arabia and China respectively who both posted marks of 7.96m.

In the men’s 4x100m relay heats, the third last event of this evening, the Singaporean team, comprising of Gary Yeo, Muhd Elfi Bin Mustapha, Muhd Amirudin Bin Jamal and Poh Seng Song, was classified as “did not finish” in what must be another let-down for them. The heat was won by Japan in a time of 39.24s. China and Chinese Taipei were the two other teams who qualified from this heat for the final in times of 39.27s and 39.82s respectively.

The Singapore Athletics Association (SAA) sent a team of nine men and three women to the Championships. Slated to compete still are Michelle Sng and Wan Lay Chi in the women’s high jump and discus throw and Stefan Tseng and Scott Wong in the men’s triple jump and discus throw respectively.

For full results, click here.