Players to watch out for at Doha Asia Games

As the Asian Games unfolds on 1st of December, here is a curtain raiser call on players to watch out for who can be superstars of this edition of games.

there are many a sportspersons who have left their impressions unforgettable during the past, this year is going to be no different.

Here with we at FunEnclave present a biography / Profile of the notable players participating at the Doha Asian Games, 2006.



Like father, like son


Profile: Koji Murofushi (Japan)
Athletics (hammer)



Following in the footsteps of a father who achieved legendary status in the same sport cannot be easy for any athlete, with people all too quick to draw comparisons between the two.

When that father won an incredible five hammer gold medals in a row at the Asian Games between 1970 and 1986, the weight of expectation would seemingly be even greater to continue this sporting dynasty.

However in the case of Japanese hammer thrower Koji Murofushi this does not appear to have been a problem – with the 32 year-old now a famous name in his own right and not just as the son of the legendary Shigenobu Murofushi.

Even so it would be amiss not to mention the comparisons given that both won their first Asian Games titles in the Thai capital Bangkok; Shigenobu in 1970 – improving on his silver medal in 1966 – and Koji 28 years later.

Delve a little deeper and you discover that while Murofushi senior was the first Asian man to throw the hammer over 70m, his son would go on to become the first Asian to launch it beyond the 80m mark in 2000.

Koji is now approaching 85m, having set the Asian record at 84.86m back in June 2003 in the Czech Republic to claim 5th place on the men’s hammer throw all-time list. He also holds the Asian Games record with a conservative 78.72m.
Birthday present

That best will surely be bettered next month in Doha when Koji will be the red-hot favourite to win his third consecutive Asian Games gold, having successfully defended his title in Busan, South Korea, four years ago.

Coming as it did with a new Games record throw of 78.72 – 15cm further than his benchmark set in 1998, this victory was all the more special for Koji as it gave him the perfect present on what was his 28th birthday.

Afterwards Koji was inevitably asked about his chances of emulating Shigenobu’s five gold medals, but said: “My father was so great that he competed until he was 41 years old. I can’t imagine that I will do better than him.”

Perhaps not do better, but equalling the haul is not beyond Koji if he were to compete beyond his 40th birthday into the 17th Asian Games. Indeed had it not been for Bi Zhong of China at the Games in Hiroshima in 1994, Koji would already have three gold medals.

That would have been a remarkable victory given that Koji only made his international debut for Japan at the 1992 World Junior Championships, having taken up the sport in his mid teens and been coached by his father.

Koji went on to attend Chukyo University’s School of Physical Education, but his father inevitably remained the main influence with the advice that only by studying the science of strength and technique would he improve.

Doha 2006 - Like father, like son

^ I should follow other sports - never heard of him before Lets see if he really makes it.

Any other sportsmen doc to watch out for - my knowledge in this is nothing to write home about I have to learn from you

Ohata: Asia’s rugby superstar

Daisuke Ohata may not play for one of the superpowers of world rugby, but the Japanese winger’s name is now written into the sport’s history books after he broke the try-scoring record of Australian legend David Campese in May.

That Ohata would break the record was never in doubt – it was a question of when the prolific wing would surpass Campese’s benchmark of 64 tries in 101 Tests, which had stood for more than a decade and remains an Australian record.

Ohata had, after all, scored 62 tries in 54 Test matches since making his debut for Japan against Korea back in November 1996 – an occasion he will never forget having marked it with a hat-trick of tries at the 15th Asian Championship.

For the record though, Campese’s mark was surpassed on 14 May 2006 with another hat-trick, this one against Georgia at the Hanazono Stadium in Osaka which, fittingly, had been the city where Ohata was born a little under 31 years earlier.

However it so nearly did not happen as it was only deep into injury time that Ohata scored his record-breaking 65th Test try, a burst of his natural speed being enough to exploit a tiny gap in the Georgian defence.

The Kobe Kobelco Steelers wing’s achievement was marked by the Japanese Rugby Football Union, who presented him with YEN1million and a gold-striped version of their national jersey amid celebrations by his teammates.

Doha 2006 - Ohata: Asia’s rugby superstar

well, the field of sports is so much vast that we can not follow all of them but still i try to keep pace with these amazing persons.

as keeping all the athletes together will not justify the purpose i am keeping one athlete per post. so keep watching.

Jamal blossoms on the world stage

Profile: Maryam Yusuf Jamal (Bahrain)
Athletics (800m, 1500m, 5000m)


Born 16 September 1984 in the same Ethiopian village as her idol Haile Gebrselassie, Zenebech Tola Kotu, as she was then known, was a latecomer to the world of athletics and only started running aged 15 in a trial organised by her school. She competed though not in the middle distances she is now associated with, but the sprint disciplines and even the high jump.

It was only a year later that Tola graduated into middle distance running by joining the Muger Club in Addis-Ababa and then narrowly failed to make the Ethiopian junior team for the World Cross Country Championships in 2001. She finished 3rd in the 1500m at the national junior championships next year and was invited to compete in races in Switzerland.

Tola took up the offer and won many events in this mix of road races and half marathons, prompting her to decide to base herself in Lausanne and file for political asylum in May 2002. She joined the Stade Lausanne Athlétisme club, but was fast becoming disillusioned with the sport and convinced that her future lay away from the track.

Her partner Mnashu Taye persuaded her to persevere and she duly achieved the 1500m Olympic qualifying time in 2004, prompting her to try and run for Ethiopia in the Athens Olympics. This request was turned down, as would be her subsequent application for Swiss citizenship due to their strict length of residency requirement.

Tola was confined to racing within Switzerland, but she continued to train hard hoping to find a solution to the problem. One duly arrived in the form of the Kingdom of Bahrain, who offered her and her partner citizenship. In January 2005 Zenebech Tola Kotu became Maryam Yusuf Jamal, although she still lives and trains in Switzerland.


Jamal quickly made a name for herself on the international stage, particularly on the track, with 22 wins from 26 races in her first season. The 2005 World Championships were one to forget, however, after she was badly spiked and faded to 5th in the 1500m, but she bounced back well to win the 800m, 1500m and 5000m titles at the Pan Arab Games in Tunis.

She ended the year with a world best time of 3:56.79 for the 1500m in Rieti and after a slow start to 2006 due to illnesses, Jamal has enjoyed a successful track season with victories over the distance in the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) World Athletics Final in Stuttgart and the IAAF World Cup in Athens, the latter in a World Cup record of 4:00.84.

Jamal is now focused on the 15th Asian Games Doha 2006 and winning two gold medals for her adopted country, which few would bet against given her rapid rise over the last couple of years.

The joy of gymnastics

For children, movement is life. The raw, exhilarating, simple joy of movement challenges and trains the developing limbs. We stretch and test our sinews, tendons, muscles and bones using our bodies in any way we can. Movement teaches balance and rhythm and life.

A very special few find that the raw joy of movement, that desire to test and stretch the limits of the human body, remains with them all their lives. These few become gymnasts.

Movement is part of the very beginning of our lives, and in the same way the challenges of gymnastics have been with us for most of our history. Texts outlining exercises akin to gymnastics have been found in China and Egypt from thousands of years before the modern era. Europe’s earliest written history, by Herodotus, describes the Gymnopaedia in Sparta from 600BC; a gymnastic and martial festival. Archaeologists in India and China have found pictograms that date from even earlier dates.

While the ancient Olympics did not feature a gymnastic discipline on its own, the flexibility, resilience and strength demonstrated were key parts of the many running and throwing disciplines at the time, and they were a standard part of the education.

Today there are three gymnastic disciplines recognised by the 15th Asian Games Doha 2006, as in the modern Olympics: artistic, rhythmic and trampoline. They all require grace, strength, rhythm, courage, precision, and suppleness; all are an elevated expression of the human mind and body, of art in athleticism; but each discipline is particularly emblematic of specific human virtues.



Trampoline, for example, requires especially rhythm and suppleness; rhythmic gymnastics demands a grace and precision above all; artistic gymnastics is firstly a demonstration of courage and strength.

It takes enormous bravery to backflip along a 4-inch (10.2cm) beam raised 4ft (1.2m) above the ground, as women’s artistic gymnasts must do. It takes phenomenal strength to swing rapidly through a series of handstands and flips and keep the rings perfectly still, as men’s artistic gymnasts must do.

While artistic gymnastics is a display of awesome strength and control, rhythmic gymnastics is undoubtedly the most entrancing of the disciplines. The routines demand grace, suppleness, balance and the delicate articulation of every limb, joint and bone while the gymnast weaves ball, ribbon or rope.

Rich
All of these disciplines combined create a huge array of competitions and medals. There are six men’s disciplines and four women’s in artistic gymnastics. Rhythmic gymnastics, too, works with six apparatus, each requiring different rhythmic talents but all demanding the grace and suppleness of a ballerina.

Currently trampoline is only recognised as a stand-alone individual discipline by the Asian Games, as is the case in modern Olympics.

In all, it makes for 19 separate competitions and one of the richest gold seams in the Games. In gymnastics, there’s a lot to play for.

And with China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and many other Asian countries and regions among some of the top performers in these events, Doha 2006 is set to offer a very exciting round-up of top quality gymnastics action.

China is expected to scoop the majority of the honours. Its men’s and women’s artistic teams took the all-round artistic award and Yang Wei secured the men’s individual all-round gold at the World Championships in Aarhus, Denmark in October. Cheng Fei, on the women’s side, was instrumental in the team victory, winning gold in both vault and floor to bring her total medal tally to three.

Now, China’s coach is worried the team will become complacent. "It's very dangerous for our gymnasts to regard themselves as indisputable number one in the Asiad gymnastics competition," Zhang Peiwen told the Xinhua news agency.

China will certainly not be unchallenged in December. Japan’s men’s artistic team will provide stiff resistance, particularly Hiroyuki Tomita, Japan’s greatest artistic gymnast, who lost his gold medal to Yang. Korea will also be eager to overcome the disappointment felt at the World Championships. It failed, against all expectations, to qualify for the final.

Doha will witness world class rivalry in rhythmic gymnastics, too. In the 2005 World Rhythmic Gymnastics Championships, Kazakhstan’s Aliya Yussupova, Japan’s Yukari Murata and China’s Yiming Xiao were the highest-placed Asian competitors in the individual all-round events, although Japan and China led Kazakhstan in the overall rankings. There is no team event in rhythmic gymnastics, but countries do count their cumulative winnings.



Lion’s share
So China looks set to take the lion’s share of laurels, but it’s far from certain because a scoring system introduced by governing body, the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG), could produce a few surprises as athletes test and experiment with the new rules.

Gone is the system where judges assumed a perfect 10 and then deducted points for errors. Now they will use a cumulative system that has no maximum score, with points awarded for difficulty and execution and deducted for errors.

FIG introduced the system following a protest by fans over the scoring of the men’s parallel bars event in Athens 2004. At that event, Russia’s Alexei Nimov thrilled and delighted fans with a spectacular display. But their delight quickly turned to anger when Nimov received just 9.725 for his routine.

After 10 minutes of booing, the shocked and bewildered judges increased the marks to 9.762. Fans, amazed by the ambition of his performance, did not realize his minor errors of execution. FIG developed the new system to make scoring more transparent.

And while it will make scoring clearer, it definitely obscures the medal outcome. The system rewards daring techniques, and at the recent World Championships some competitors complained that it was pushing athletes into risky manoeuvres. Certainly the men put on some spectacular displays at that competition.

But women tended to focus more on perfection of execution and they scored at least as highly as their male colleagues, proving that excellence of execution is still equally valued as the ambition of the routine.

These rules were first used at the World Championships in October, but Doha 2006 is just the second time the rules were used in real competition. It could still produce surprises as the new regulations bed down.

All eyes on Ding once again

Confidence has never been a problem for China’s Ding Junhui, who enters the 15th Asian Games Doha 2006 as overwhelming favourite to retain the gold medal he won as a 15 year-old in South Korea four years ago.

Ding, who as a teenage spectator once challenged a professional player for a game during the interval of a tournament in Guangzhou, South China, carries the hopes of a nation on his shoulders in Doha in December.

The heavy burden of expectation should not be a problem however as Ding has never been out of the limelight since easily beating Thai ace Supoj Saenla, a player seven years his senior, 3-1 in the 14th Asian Games Busan 2002 final.

As Cui Zhiqiang, the team manager at the time, said: “There had been great pressure on the boy because he wanted to play well for his country but he brought out his full potential when it mattered.”

Since then Ding has gone on to fulfil his potential on the world stage, enjoying a meteoric rise to the top by mixing sublime skill with an icy temperament that belies his years.

Ding made a big impression on his professional debut in 2004 when he was given a wildcard to the Masters at Wembley, United Kingdom.

A surprise victory over Joe Perry, one of the world’s top 16, marked him out as a potential star of the game with many commentators believing he was a world champion in the making.

A great talent

It did not take Ding long to claim his first professional title and there was no better place for him to do it than on his 18th birthday at the Haidian Stadium in Beijing at the China Open, against one of the sport’s legends.

Seven-time world champion Stephen Hendry was beaten 9-5 in a final watched by a television audience of around 100million, signalling Ding’s arrival in the big time.

"I didn't feel any pressure because I just looked at it as a practice match to learn from Stephen,” Ding revealed coolly.

Hendry in turn was full of admiration, saying: “Ding's a great talent. There's no doubt about that and what he did in front of his home crowd was a real achievement.”

The fear was whether Ding could produce the same standard of play outside of Asia, but those questions were quickly quashed in December last year when the Chinese became the first non-British or Irish winner of the UK Championship, the second biggest event in snooker.

Ding cruised through the early rounds in York, England, and then beat Neil Robertson and Perry in the quarterfinal and semifinal. “Ding's white-ball control was absolutely fantastic,” admitted the vanquished Robertson. “I don't know if anyone else is quite so good at that, apart from Ronnie O’Sullivan.”

A 10-6 victory over six-time world champion Steve Davis in the final followed, a victory as resounding as the scoreline suggests, with Ding more than matching the old master for tactical and positional play. "There are loads of people who can pot balls but his level of maturity marks him out as something special," said Davis.

Favourite for gold

Ding then claimed his third ranking title at the Northern Ireland Trophy in August this year, beating O’Sullivan 9-6 in the final. The success made him only the third player after O’Sullivan and John Higgins to win three top titles before turning 20.

The feat caps a remarkable ascent that began when Ding picked up a cue for the first time because of boredom at the age of nine and joined his father for a game. A year later he had become unbeatable in his hometown of Yixing, Jiangsu, near Shanghai, and soon he was attracting attention from the Chinese Billiards Association.

By the age of 11 Ding was practicing eight hours a day and it is this dedication that he hopes can inspire other promising players from Asia, such as compatriots Liang Wenbo and Liu Song and Thailand’s Issara Kachaiwong, all of whom will be competing in Doha.

"When I was young I moved away from home to South China and I was taught by experienced players,” he said. "Players such as Liang and Liu are at a similar level and they will learn much from playing in the UK, as I have done.”

Maybe so in the future, but they will have to make great strides if they are to prevent Ding from standing on top of the medal rostrum in Doha.

‘Qatari Gazelle’ set to make his mark

Ahmed Khalil Al-Mohannadi is an up-and-coming Qatari table tennis player. It was only in September that he celebrated his 17th birthday. As such, he will be one of the youngest Qatari competitors in the 15th Asian Games which opens in Doha on Friday 1 December.

Though Al-Mohannadi is officially still classed as a junior, the Doha-based player will be mixing it with much older and superior opposition at the Games. However, the experience is bound to stand him in very good stead in the fullness of time.

Al-Mohannadi is a “very talented player”, according to Khalid Al-Mawlawi, Secretary General of the Qatar Table Tennis Association (QTTA).

How well does he think Al-Mohannadi will fare during the Asian Games? “Don’t forget he is still classed as a junior. How well he will perform as a senior during the Games remains to be seen,” says Mr Al-Mawlawi. Although he does not expect him to win any medals in December, he does expect him to acquit himself well. “He is a competitive young man,” adds Mr Al-Mawlawi.

Useful backhand
Al-Mohannadi, who still attends secondary school in Doha, is ranked 815th in the men’s top 1,000 world ranking list for 2006. A good performance at the Asian Games should help to push him higher up the ladder. His strengths in the game are his service and a useful backhand topspin.

A right-hander and regarded as an attacking player, Al-Mohannadi won both the Qatari junior and men’s singles titles last year. He also finished 2nd in the junior doubles championship and was 4th in the men’s doubles. In 2003, he finished 3rd in the junior singles championship.

Last year Al-Mohannadi, a member of the Al-Arabi Club in Doha, took part in the 10th Arab Cup in Beirut, winning the junior final against his compatriot, Waleed Nasser. He also finished 3rd in the junior doubles event.

In May and June of this year, Al-Mohannadi and Nasser spent a few weeks training and playing friendly matches in Ottawa, Canada. The main focus of that trip was for the two players to obtain more match practice and experience.

Silver service? Al-Mohannadi has a strong serve, but it could be too early for a Games medal

Ambitions and dreams
While in Canada, as part of a small delegation from the QTTA, Al-Mohannadi also attended English lessons. Although he speaks some English, he is not quite fluent in the language yet.

“His long stay in Canada was not only about improving his game. It was also about improving his education. His educational needs were also being catered for while away from home,” said Mr Al-Mawlawi.

Al-Mohannadi is considered to be a fast player. “I am so quick that people call me the Qatari Gazelle,” he says, tongue-in-cheek.

Like all sports people, Al-Mohannadi, who is 170cm tall and weighs 65kg, has his ambitions and dreams. “My ambitions are to win the world [senior] title and become the world’s No 1 table tennis player.”

The Power Game

Can Pawina Thongsuk add Asian Games gold to her Olympic crown?

One of the oldest sports on the Olympic event list and an ever-present since the first Games of the modern era in 1896, weightlifting requires its competitors to possess immense strength, speed of movement, endurance and timing.

The sport is split into two disciplines; the snatch – where a competitor lifts the bar bell from the floor and straight above their head in one continuous movement as they stand upright; and the clean and jerk – where they lift to a squatting position with the bar bell resting on their collarbone, before a second movement jerks the weight over their head as they stand up.

Each competitor has to remain standing with straight arms and legs before their lift can be successfully recognised by a total of three referees, and they all receive three attempts to successfully lift their chosen weight.

Medals are presented separately for the snatch and clean and jerk categories, while a third medal category exists for the overall combined scores from both events.

At the 15th Asian Games Doha 2006, spectators will be left fascinated by the sheer strength of the competitors as many end up lifting much more than their own body weight in order to win the top prizes. But who will be the main contenders for Asian Games glory?

Lifters to look out for
Recent results might point at China to enjoy most of the success in the women’s competition after it won five gold medals from the seven weight categories at the recent World Championships in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

In the 48kg event, China’s brilliant Yang Lian stormed away with gold medals and world records from all three categories in her debut appearance, setting a high standard ahead of Doha 2006.

Speaking at a press conference after the event, a confident Yang also ominously predicted there was still more to come. The 24 year-old said: “I came here not just for the gold medal but also to break the world record. Breaking world records gives me a satisfaction of fulfilment. I think I have the potential to break more records in the future.”

Yang’s compatriot Qiu Hongxia also broke world records at the tournament in the 53kg clean and jerk and overall total, but will face stiff competition in Doha from Thailand’s Junpim Kantatean and Indonesia’s double Olympic silver medallist Raema Lisa Rumbewas.

China’s women enjoyed further gold medal success at Santo Domingo in the 58kg class with Qiu Hongmei lifting the winning total, while Quyang Xiaofang took the honours in the 63kg event.

However, Quayang will be under pressure to repeat her performance at the 15th Asian Games as Thailand’s 26 year-old legend Pawina Thongsuk returns to action after missing the World Championships.

2004 Olympic champion Thongsuk was rested from last month’s tournament in order to prepare properly for the Games and will be fully focused on securing her first Asian Games gold in Doha.

Elsewhere, in the women’s heavyweight categories, Cao Lei of China will be a favourite after comfortably outperforming Korea’s Kim Soon-Hee and Indonesia’s Sinta Darmariani in the 75kg class at the World Championships, while Jang Mi-ran of Korea and her Chinese rival Mu Shuang Shuang will continue their ongoing battle for supremacy in the +75kg event.



'Hercules' is the heavyweight leader
China has also recently dominated the lower weight categories in the men’s competition, although central Asian countries have tended to provide the best power lifters in the heavyweight divisions.

In the 56kg division, China's junior world record holder Li Zheng will be looking to follow up his three gold medals at the World Championships with another top-of-the-podium finish in Doha.

Similarly, opponents will find it hard to out-lift double world champion Qiu Le in the 62kg class, while 2004 Olympic gold medallist (62kg) Shi Zhiyong will be in the hunt for another gold medal haul in the 69kg category. Elsewhere, former world champion Li Hongli hopes his experience in the 77kg division counts as he looks to regain supremacy.

Kazakhstan’s Ilya Ilin will be an exciting lifter to look out for in the 94kg category after he won gold at the 2005 Junior World Championships and followed it with an overall gold medal at the World Championships in Santo Domingo.

However, in the men’s heavyweight category (+105kg) IR Iran’s Hossein Reza Zadeh is the ultimate star. Officially regarded as the ‘strongest man in the world’, the 'Iranian Hercules' is a double Olympic gold medallist after victories in 2000 and 2004, and holds world records in all three disciplines.

It was hoped that Reza Zadeh might try to break his own records in Santo Domingo, but the Iranian superstar refused to burn himself out ahead of Doha 2006. He said: “I was going for the record but I had gold assured and I did not want to force myself too much, because in two months I have another competition in Qatar.”

A surprise contender to Reza Zadeh's crown, however, is China's Dong Feng, whose overall bronze medal perfromance at the World Championships will give the lifter renewed confidence ahead of the Games.

The 15th Asian Games Doha 2006 weightlifting tournament takes place from 2 – 6 December.

Ramzi on track for more golden glory in Doha

Profile: Rashid Ramzi (Bahrain)
Athletics (800m, 1500m)

Rashid Ramzi is the only male athlete ever to have done the 800m and 1500m double at the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) World Championships, a feat he achieved in Helsinki in 2005. With the retirement of the legendary Hicham El Guerrouj, Ramzi is poised to take over as the king of middle distance running.

Born in Safi, Morocco on 17 July 1980, he joined his local athletics club at the relatively late age of 17. Following a promising junior career, he opted to switch nationalities and in 2002 he became a naturalised Bahraini.

Since then, under the tutelage of coach Khalid Boulami, his ascent to the pinnacle of international athletics has been relentless. He took gold over 1500m at the 14th Asian Games in Busan, Korea in 2002, and followed this up by beating Qatar steeplechase superstar Saif Saaeed Shaheen to gold over the same distance at the following year’s Asian Championships in Manila, Philippines.

In 2004, Ramzi gave a hint of things to come over 800m as he took a surprise silver at the World Indoor Championships in Budapest, Hungary.

But it was at 1500m where he was making an even greater impact, and when he took the scalp of El Geurrouj, ending the Moroccan’s four-year winning streak over 1500m at the Rome Golden Gala that summer, he looked poised for the ultimate glory in the sport with the Olympic Games looming.
Making history

Sadly, his dream ended in unfortunate circumstances when he missed out on the final in Athens 2004 after being tripped in the semifinals. However, he bounced back with his history-making double in Helsinki where, after a commanding performance to win the 1500m, his specialist event, he decided to try his luck over 800m.

Running the perfect race, he burst clear with 80m to go, leaving Russia’s Olympic champion Yuriy Borzakovskiy with too much to do as Ramzi strode into the history books.

In 2006 he has continued to progress, breaking the 3:30 barrier for the first time ever when clocking a new Asian record of 3:29.14 in finishing 2nd to Daniel Kipchirchir Komen of Kenya at the Rome Golden Gala in July.

With speed, strength and an excellent tactical mind, Ramzi is the complete middle distance package and is expected to be one of the stars of the 15th Asian Games. Assuming he is at his best, it will require a truly superhuman effort to deny him more golden glory at Doha 2006.