Chinese runners in Stanford meet (Apr 29)

Mens's 800m
3. Li Xiangyu 1:49.16
Men's 1500m
4. Gu Ming 3:42.10 (pb)
Women's 3000m steeplechase
3. Jin Yuan 10:01.94 (pb)

2 pbs were set in Stanford.Gu Ming sliced off a few hundredth of seconds from his previous best set in Shanghai GP last year. Jin Yuan competed her 3rd 3000m steeplechase and cut down more than 17 seconds off her pb in this meet. Li Xiangyu who set the indoor national 800m record earlier, ran a moderate 1:49.16. Last year, he did 1:46.45, just 0.03 seconds behind Ma's army runner, Mu Weiguo's 13-year-old record set in 1994 Hiroshima Asian Games. Hope it gets wiped off soon.

Today is Osaka GP. China sends a small contingent including Liu Xiang (110m hurdle), Shi Dongpeng (110m hurdle), Zhang Shufeng (men's high jump), Chen Qi (men's Javelin), Chen Yaling (women's long jump), Zhang Yingning (women's pole vault), Zhang Wenxiu (women's hammer) and Hao Shuai (women's hammer). Women's 4 x100m team (Qin Wangping, Han Ling, Chen Jue and Wang Jing) is also competing. Women's pole vault was out and Zhang Yingning won the competition in 4.40m. She just set Asian Indoor record at 4.46m. Good to see another rising pole vaulter to compete with Gao Shuying. What she needs now is Gao's consistency. Zhao Yingying, another 4.40m performer in 2005, started failing to improve and now 3.80m is what she all can do. There are just so many pre-mature falling stars or one-hit stars in China. Before this meet, 95% of the news in China have been focused on Liu Xiang's appearance and a small portion of news goes to Shi Dongpeng on whether he will get the second spot behind Liu in the competition. It really sucks.

The 2nd thing is I don't know how Chinese AAA determines the women's 4x100m team. Qin is the only experienced but she has not improved since 2000. Her pb still stands at 11.30s and she only got close this mark a couple of times. I guess she is only interested in winning honour for her province (Jiangsu) in national games. She finished 3rd in 2002 Asian Games and 5th or 6th in 2006. She does not seem to be going anywhere far. Natioanal Games Champion are more realistic for her to secure housing and money. The other three are so inexperienced and their levels are in 11.50 to 11.80s. Although the quartet won Asian Games title, I don't have high expectation for them in Olympics if they don't improve their pbs to 11.20 to 11.40.

I'd love to see how Hao Shuai performs in hammer. She did 68+ last week in Beijing to set a 3-meter pb. 70m is all I look for.

Just a few seconds back, Liu Xiang won his 4th Osaka GP title in 13.14s. Great performance again. Shi Dongpeng, this time, lives up his expectation to slice .04 seconds off his pb to finish 2nd (13.24s), just 0.1 second behind Liu. He climbed to the 2nd all time in China in front of Li Tong (13.25s), finalist of 1991 world championships. With this time, Shi should be more confident to make it the second time to the world championships final.