Ranjit with seven men, six women to vie for top honours

Pune, Jun 26 (UNI) India's Renjith Maheshwary, Sinimol Paulose will be the top draw in the third and final leg of the Standard Chartered Bank sponsored, Asian Athletic Grand Prix meet that gets underway at the Baburao Sanas Sports Complex here tomorrow.

The one-day 50,000 dollar meet has attracted 230 sportspersons from 20 Asian countries but they face the threat of rains looming large over them as the city is being lashed by rains since the past four days.

Ranjit Maheshwary, who became the first Indian to cross 17m barrier in triple jump at Guwahati will attempt to raise his record distance further. He ranks World no 18 in IAAF 2007 top list after his historic jump at Guwahati. China's Li Yanxi (17.15), gold medallist in Doha Asiad, together with silver medallist Roman Valiyev (16.98) of Kazakhstan will clash with Ranjit for the third time but failed to stop Ranjith.

In the last six years of the Asian GP, the series has certainly grown in stature as so far one Asian record and eight new AGP records were set according to the tournament directors Morris Nicholas, who is also the secretary general of the Asian Athletic Association (AAA) and Dr Lalit Bhanot, who is also the secretary general of the Athletic Federation of India (AFI).

India's Sinimol Paulose (PB:4:10.50s) has been unbeaten in the series so far. The Doha bronze medallist has beaten Huang Jing of China (PB 4: 10.13), Kazakhstan's Svetlana Lukasheva (4:13.83) and Viktoriya Yalovtseva, besides another Chinese Xiaomei Long, the Asian junior champion over 800m in the Bangkok and Guwahati legs.

Local favourite and World Championship medallist Anju George will attempt to touch World Championship qualifying mark of 6.60m. The event, which has been introduced mainly on the request of the Indian ace at Guwahati and Pune mainly with the view to qualify for the World Athletic Championship to be held in Osaka -- Japan from July 25 to September 2.

Surender Singh of India, who set Asian leading mark of 7:57.87s in 3000m, is now eyeing sub 7:55 in Pune. Teammate Sunil Kumar will try to defend his title.

Meng Yan, the silver medallist at Doha, is looking forward to achieving a clean sweep of titles for the second year in a row in men's 400m Hurdles. Although it will not be easy for him tomorrow, as India's Joseph Abraham who came close to beat Yan with 49.52s, Meng's team-mate Zhu Zhi (49.88) and former World University Games silver medallist Yevgeniy Meleshenko (Kazakhstan, 49.46) will make the competition a memorable one. India's Patlavath Shankar will be seen in action as he had opted out in the previous two legs due to injury.

There are 13 athletes who will attempt hat-trick in different events. They are: Men 1 Sergey Zassimovich of Kazakhstan in High Jump 2 Gholum Ahmed of Kuwait in Shot put 3 Meng Yan of China in 400m Hurdles 4 Samimi Abbas of Iran in Discus Throw 5 Wang Liangyu of China in 400m 6 Sajad Moradi of Iran in 1500m 7 Renjith Maheshwary of India in Triple Jump Women 1 Xie Limei of China in Triple Jump 2 Guzel Khubbieva of Uzbekistan in 100m 3 Anastasiya Vinogradova of Kazakhstan in 100m Hurdles 4 Pamang Buoban of Thailand in Javelin throw 5 Li Ling of China in Shot Put 6 Sinimol Paulose of India in 1500m UNI