Wang will lead Chinese athletic team

Wang will lead Chinese athletic team

BEIJING (AFP): Wang Junxia, one-time star of Ma Junren's army of runners, leads a Chinese team of 48 to next week's 11th Asian Athletics Championships in Jakarta.

"We are going to try and prove we are still the best in Asia," said Chinese Athletics Association president Huang Zhi.

Without Wang, Qu Yunxia and Liu Dong--who dominated the world championships in Stuttgart in 1993--China managed only a silver medal in last month's championships in Gothenburg through Huang Zhihong in the shot.

But Wang was given a standing ovation when she made a stunning return to form in a 10,000-meter race at Changchun in the national championships last week.

The world record holder finished in 31min 23.24sec, 19 seconds outside the time that Portugal's Fernando Ribeiro won the world title in Gothenburg.

It was almost two minutes outside her world mark of 29:31.78, but was still the best performance this year by Wang, the only woman to have run the distance in under 30 minutes.

Wang had failed to get into China's world championship team after a torrid six months that saw her form slump after a much publicized split with Ma Junren over his treatment of the runners.

Wang said at Changchun she was preparing with other former Ma runners for Jakarta where she would be defending the 10,000m title she won in Manila in 1993 as well as doubling up in the 5,000m.

Clear champion

China won 23 gold, 11 silver and four bronze medals at the 1993 championships to finish well clear of South Korea's haul of 10 medals.

Zeng Lizhi, who triple jumped 17.30m at Changchun, Huang Geng, who has been jumping regularly over 8 meters, and world indoor championship women's triple jump bronze medalist Ren Ruiping are other stars in China's team for Jakarta.

Ma Junren, now building up a new team around Qu Yunxia, the 1,500m world record holder, has pledged to challenge for gold in Atlanta but none of his team are going to Jakarta.

Ma's new runners were expected to clash for the first time with Wang and his former stars at China's Inter-City Games in Nanjing from Oct. 10 to 30.

Wang led a breakaway from Ma's Army at the end of last year accusing the athletics guru of pocketing the team's earnings and calling his training methods draconian.

She failed to make the team for the world championships after suffering a slump in form but now is ready to step back into the breach.