Chinese athlete Jiang Qiuyan claimed the title of women's 20km race walk, the first gold medal of the 17th Asian Athletics Championship starting in the Jordanian capital of Amman on Wednesday.
Bai Yanmin, Jiang's teammate, got the silver medal while the bronze went to Kazakh Svetlana Tolstaya.
The competition was held early in the morning at the Amman International Stadium, which holds all the events of the 2007 Asian Athletics Championship.
"The weather is good, but the track for the race walk with more slopes is a little different from those of previous competitions," Jiang told Xinhua after finishing the race in one hour 36 minutes 15.9 seconds.
Jiang's coach Zhang Qinghua said it's not Jiang's best performance, adding that the athlete clocked 1:28:01 in 2005.
The 17th Asian Athletics Championship, which was originally scheduled to be hosted by Lebanon, was transferred to Jordan due to the unrest in Lebanon.
About 450 athletes from 33 countries and regions in Asia have been registered to participate in the competition from July 25 to 29.
Source: Xinhua
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