Italy’s Assunta Legnante celebrates on the podium with her women’s shot put F12 gold. (IPC)
Italy’s Assunta Legnante clinched her second gold medal in five days at the Dubai 2019 World Para Athletics Championships.
Legnante had already won the women’s shot put F12 on Friday and she carried on from where she had left. This time, the challenge was the women’s discuss throw F11 with China’s world record holder Liangmin Zhang standing in the way.
Zhang was leading with a 36.78m throw until the fifth round when a 37.89 throw put the Italian ahead and allowed her to complete a grand double. Brazil’s Izabela Campos took bronze with a 34.28m effort..
With this triumph, Legnante has increased her world titles tally to five. It was also Italy’s second gold in Dubai.
“I’m absolutely happy, it’s a medal that I was really strongly looking for. I hope that next year in Tokyo I will break the World Record,” said Legnante, who immediately heralded that she has set sights on her third Paralympic medal at Tokyo 2020.
“There are a few new young athletes and our results are similar, so that is making the event (Tokyo 2020) more competitive,” the Italian added.
Though China had to settle for silver in the women’s discus throw F11, they still extended their lead in the medals table with two more victories.
Pengxiang Sun won the men’s javelin throw F41 with a new world record of 44.35m. Iraq took silver and bronze through Wildan Nukhalawi (43.96m) and Kovan Abdukraheem (42.24m) respectively.
World record holder Lijuan Zou could not better her own world mark but set a new championship record of 8.79m to win the women’s shot put F34. Silver was bagged by Saida Amoudi (8.09m) of Morocco and Vanessa Wallace (7.66m) of Great Britain took bronze.
Bekjon Chevarov gave Uzbekistan their fourth gold medal in the men’s long jump with a 7.23m effort ahead of USA’s Isaac Jean-Paul (7.18m) and Spain’s Ivan Cano (7.04m).
Germany’s Birgit Kober’s 11.19m gold medal effort was a new championship record in the women’s shot put F36. The silver went to Russia’s Galina Lipatnikova (10.36m) and bronze to China’s Qing Wu (9.32m).
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