Kobe, Japan: Tejitu Daba Chalchissa and Dejenee Regasa Mootumaa led Bahrain to a sweep of the 5,000-metre races at the Asian Athletics Championships yesterday.
The Ethiopian-born Chalchissa won the women's race in a championship-record time of 15 minutes, 22.48 seconds. Japan filled the next two places, Hitomi Niiya crossing in 15:34.19 and Yuriko Kobayashi in 15:42.59.
The 19-year-old Chalchissa has now qualified for the August 27-September 4 world championships in Daegu, South Korea.
"It's an important win for me," Chalchissa said. "This was a good competition and it will give me a lot of confidence."
Mootumaa, also born in Ethiopia, pulled away from Japanese runner Yuki Sato and teammate Alemu Bekele Gebre in the last 100 metres of the men's race to complete the double for Bahrain with a time of 13:39.71, also a championship record.
Sato took second in 13:40.78 and Gebre was next in 13:41.93.
Bahrain also won both the men's and women's 10,000 races on the opening day of the meet, which started on Thursday and ends today at Kobe Universiade Stadium with about 500 athletes from 45 countries competing. Earlier, Satomi Kubokura and Takatoshi Abe led Japan to a sweep of the 400 hurdles.
Kubokura won the women's race in 56.52 and Abe gave the host nation its second gold medal of the day with a time of 49.64 in the men's race.
In other events, Chang Ming-Huang of Taiwan set a championship record in the men's shot put with a throw of 20.14 metres.
Mutaz Eisa Barshim of Qatar also set an event record with a leap of 2.35 metres in the men's high jump.
Wu Sha of China cleared 4.35 metres to win the women's pole vault.
Xie Limei, also of China, took the women's triple jump by leaping 14.54 metres.
