Maheshwari, Mortaza eyeing golden treble

CHENNAI: Triple jumper Renjith Maheshwari and 400m favourite SK Mortaza will spearhead the Indian challenge in the Asian Grand Prix Athletics Championship on Wednesday.
Maheshwari and Mortaza won gold medals both in Pune and Bangalore and the duo are expected to assert their supremacy again tomorrow.
With top Indian athletes busy in camps - both at home and abroad - Asian countries like China, Japan and Korea sending their second-string athletes, the event has lost much of its sheen and 320 athletes - including 189 from India - will be competing for top honours in the events tomorrow which would feature three open events.
Indian Grand Prix, which is in its ninth edition, would be held tomorrow afternoon followed by Asian Grand Prix in the evening under floodlights.
Apart from Mortaza and Maheshwari, another home favourite is shot-putter Omprakash, who after narrowly missing gold in Pune, won the competition in Bangalore with superb clearance of 19.80 metres pushing the Pune gold medalist Zhang Jun of China (19.53m) to second spot.
In fact the men athletes have grabbed 13 medals including five gold medals.
Likewise, Krishna Poonia, the discus thrower, who had won bronze medal in 2006 Doha Asian Games with a personal best of 61.53 metres, went a step further marginally increasing her effort to 61.64 metres for gold in Bangalore.
Poonia, ranked ninth in the world, clinched the top honours in the event in Pune and it was a clean sweep for India as Seema Antil and Harwant Kaur swapped their placing for silver and bronze in Pune and Bangalore.
Eight other athletes have also finished in medal bracket winning silver and bronze medals in the last two events.
Former sprint ace P T Usha's ward Tintu Luka (800m), who was indisposed after winning the silver in Pune, is raring to go for the gold here.
In the 4X100m relay, the Indian men quartet set a new national record of 39.23 secs,while overseas athletes from Kazakhsthan, Uzbekistan, Sri Lanka and China have ruled the roost in other track and field events.
Asian Grand Prix events: Men: 100m, 400m, 800m, Shot Put, High Jump, Long Jump, Triple Jump and 110m Hurdles and Women: 100m, 400m, 800m, 100m hurdles, High Jump, Triple Jump, Shot Put and Discus.