Hossein Rasooli, Iran’s discus thrower improved the country’s record of the category to 62.29 meters and won the gold medal of the 18th round of Asian Junior Athletics Championships in Gifu, Japan, on Saturday.
It was his sixth and last attempt which served as the decisive shot for the Iranian thrower to set the record and win gold, IRNA reported.
Athletes from Qatar and the host country finished second and third respectively. Moaaz Mohamed Ibrahim of Qatar with 61.50m finished runner up and Kosei Yamashita improved his personal best to 56.50m to win bronze.
In fourth place was another Iranian thrower Mahmoud Mansouri with 56.30 meters.
Iranian runner in the 800m category, Abdolrahim Dorzadeh won silver by running the distance in 1:54.23 minutes; Dorzadeh finished second after the Indian athlete Anu Kumar who got his nose in front with the difference of 0.12 seconds.
Fuki Torii of the host country won bronze after Dorzadeh. Omid Amirian from Iran crossed the finishing line with a record of 1:54.60 minutes.
First Day, First Medal
On Thursday Iran’s female hammer thrower Reyhaneh Arani made history by winning the first medal of the game in the history of women hammer throwers of Iran.
Arani threw the hammer for 56.46 meters to set a new national record for the game in juniors’ division and won the bronze medal. Chinese hammer throwers dominated the first and second spots. Mengyuan Zhou won the gold medal of the event for setting a record of 64.81 meters. Jiangyan Li finished runner-up for the 61.44m throw. Japanese and Qatari players took fourth and fifth places respectively.
The 18th edition of the juniors’ championships kicked off on June 7 in 22 categories for men and the same number for women and will wrap up on Sunday. Asian Athletics Association is hosting the games at Gifu Nagaragawa Stadium.
