Bahrain’s Eunice Chumba races to women’s marathon gold at Asian Games

TDT | Manama                                 

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Bahrain’s Eunice Chumba clinched the women’s maathon gold medal yesterday to wrap up a sensational campaign for the national athletics team at the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou, China.

Eunice put in an impressive run to win by nearly two minutes ahead of the rest of the field. Her victory was the 10th gold medal by the Kingdom’s elite athletes at this year’s Asiad and it capped their outstanding haul, which included 16 total medals featuring 10 gold, one silver and five bronze.

Eunice began yesterday’s 42.2-kilometre race amongst the leading group for the first part of the distance, but by 20km was already in first place. She never looked back from there, maintaining her strong stride all the way to the finish to complete the event in a total time of two hours 26 minutes 14 seconds.

With the result, Eunice won her first Asian Games gold medal, and second Asiad medal overall in her career. The 30-year-old previously came away with the women’s 10,000m silver at the previous edition of the multi-sport event in 2018 in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Deshun Zhang of China followed as the silver-medallist in 2:27:55, while Sardana Trofimova of Kyrgyzstan won bronze in 2:28:41. A total of 17 runners started the race. Amongst them was Bahrain’s Desi Mokonin, who did not finish.

In the men’s marathon yesterday, Bahraini Shumi Dechasa came a solid fifth overall amongst 18 athletes. He finished in 2:13:51—49 seconds behind winner Jie He of China, who captured gold in 2:13:02.

Ilryong Han of North Korea clinched silver in 2:13:27, while Shaohui Yang of China completed the podium placers in 2:13:39. With the completion of the athletics competition in Hangzhou, Bahrain’s national athletics team matched their gold medal winnings from 2018 and came close to their totals from that year and from 2014 in Incheon, South Korea.

In Jakarta, Bahrain’s athletes clinched 23 medals in all, with 10 gold, seven silver and six bronze medals; while in Incheon, the Kingdom’s elite track and field stars came away with 18 medals, including nine gold, six silver and three bronze.

In all three occasions, the athletics squad have been responsible for winning a majority of the Kingdom’s Asian Games medals.

Combat sports

Meanwhile, today Bahrain’s jiu-jitsu and wrestling athletes will be in action.

Mahmood Alnajjar will be competing in the round of 32 of the men’s under-77kg category in jii-jitsu, while Ali Munfaredi will be in the round of 16 of the same weight class, where he is awaiting to learn of his opponent.

In wrestling, Bahrain’s Alibeg Alibegov will be competing in the men’s freestyle 65kg quarter-finals, where he will go up against Abdullah Assaf of Palestine. Alibegov is one of four wrestlers flying the Kingdom’s flag in Hangzhou.

The others are Magomedrasul Asluev, Magomed Sharipov and Akhmed Tazhudinov, who just last month was crowned world champion in his weight class at the World Wrestling Championships 2023 in Belgrade. The Bahraini trio will be in action on the Asian Games’ final day tomorrow.