World shot put champion Gong takes an easy victory at national indoor event

JINAN - Two-time world shot put champion Gong Lijiao of China opened her season of 2021 with an easy victory at a national indoor invitational event here on Wednesday.

The 32-year-old, representing the Hebei team, dominated the competition from the first effort of 19.05 meters and went on to throw 19.12m and 19.16m before wrapping up the convincing win with a final round hurl of 19.45m

Gao Yang from Team Jiangsu finished second at 18.61m, followed by Jiang Yue from Anhui Province at 17.59m.

Despite the easy win, Gong was not satisfied with her performance as her expression showed her disappointment after every of the six attempts.

"I was very excited to take part in the first competition of the year. But I just can not find the right rhythm throughout the six rounds. I think I need to compete in more events to get my best form," said Gong, whose personal best mark is 20.43m.

In the men's 800m race held in the afternoon, Liu Dezhu from Team Guangxi clocked one minute, 49.55 seconds to finish first in the preliminaries, cutting 0.07s off the national indoor record held by Li Junlin in 2019.

Li of Team Shanxi also qualified for the Thursday's final.