INCHEON: Bahrain and Qatar struck more Asian Games athletics gold on Monday as their policy of cherry-picking top African talent continued to pay off amid discontent as two-time world champion Maryam Yusuf Jamal led another assault on the track and field medals.

Ethiopian-born Jamal tore down the home straight to win the women’s 1,500 metres, just before Moroccan-origin Mohamad Al-Garni won the men’s race to add their names to the growing list of African-born runners who have won gold for oil-rich Gulf states Bahrain and Qatar.

Wei Jizhong, an honorary life vice president of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA), warned of the dangers of buying overnight success rather than growing it at home.

Qatar has obviously invested much in home-grown high jumper Mutaz Essa Barshim, who defended his Asiad title and cleared 2.35m, breaking a 32-year Asian Games record but well short of the Asian record of 2.43 he set this month in Belgium.

Barshim’s gold was the fourth for Qatar in athletics at the Asian Games, where China continue to lead the overall medal tally with 112 golds, followed by hosts South Korea with 44 and Japan with 35 at the end of day 10.

Elsewhere in the competition, Abubaker Ali Kamal of Qatar won the men’s 3,000 steeplechase after returning to the track this year after serving a two-year ban for using the banned performance booster EPO.

Maria Natalia Londa won Indonesia’s first Asian Games athletics gold since 1998 with a personal best of 6.55 metres in the women’s long jump.

India’s Seema Punia was in tears after winning the women’s discus in her first Asian Games appearance and Uzbekistan’s Ekaterina Voronina also welled up on the podium as she received heptathlon gold.

Badminton king Lin Dan saw off world champion Chen Long in an epic men’s singles final as he successfully defended his title and showed he can still dominate the sport at 30.

A day after beating his arch-rival Lee Chong Wei, Lin bested a challenger five years his junior 12-21, 21-16, 21-16 at a rocking Gyeyang Gymnasium and when asked what his next goal was, suggested he could still be around for the 2020 Olympic Games.

Kazakhstan had won an average of one gold per day through the first nine days of competition in Incheon, but the floodgates opened on Monday with five golds in canoe/kayak and another in men’s beach volleyball as they jumped to fourth place in the medals table with 15 golds.

South Korea won the men’s kayak single 100m with Japan’s only gold of the day coming in the kayak double 200m.

China began their customary dominance of the diving events with four-time Olympic gold medallists Wu Minxi and Shi Tingmao winning the women’s synchronised 3-metre springboard while Chen Aisen and Zhang Yanquan won the men’s 10-metre platform synchronised event.

Published in Dawn, September 30th , 2014