11th IAAF World Junior Championships logo (© c)
MonteCarloAn impressive total of 179 nations have preliminary entered athletes to compete at the 11th edition of the IAAF World Junior Championships in Beijing, China, 15 – 20 August 2006.
The number of Member Federations intending to participate at the championships is a record, and should witness approximately 1600 athletes performing over the six days. The next best figure is the 170 countries that competed at the 1998 edition of this IAAF World Athletics Series event which was held in Annecy, France. The IAAF currently has 211 Member Federations.
The competition in August will be based at the Chaoyang Sport Centre in Beijing which has a capacity of 10,000 seats and to test out the facilities which will be available for athletes, spectators, officials and the media, a special two-day competition was held last weekend (1 / 2 July).
The meeting featured a mixture of senior and junior athletes and notable among the results of the younger performers was a 17.20m winning attempt in the women’s Shot Put by 15-year-old Gong Lijiao (born 10 Jan 1991). But we will not see her at this summer’s championships as she is too young. Only athletes born in 1987, 1988, 1989, and 1990, can compete in the 2006 World Junior Championships.
However, in second place in the same competition was 19-year-old Liu Yingfan (born 9 Feb 1987), who blasted her implement out to 16.93m, and is a possible candidate for the national junior team having a qualifying best of 17.33m (2005), though it must be noted that the Chinese are particularly strong in this event at junior level.
Beyond the junior results there were also good performances by the following senior athletes:
In the women's Discus Throw, Sun Taifeng produced her season's best of 61.01m, Ma Ning won the Javelin Throw with 56.54m, and Huang Xiaoxiao, who placed 5th in the Helsinki World Championships last summer, won the 400m Hurdles in her season's best of 56.73 seconds. The best men's result was a 2.20m High Jump by Zhang Shufeng.
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