Short and sweet
Su Bingtian’s Ireland victory paves way for Tokyo 2020
China’s Su Bingtian got the new season off to a flying start with an effortless 60m win in Ireland on Wednesday, setting the pace for a buildup year to Tokyo 2020.
Su, co-holder of the 9.91 sec Asian record in the 100 meters, put the small Irish town of Athlone in the spotlight by clocking a stadiumrecord 6.52 sec in the indoor race, cheered on by Chinese students at the AIT International Grand Prix, a gap event between the World Indoor Tour legs in Europe.
Japan’s Kamakawi Takuna finished second with a personal best of 6.58 sec while Britain’s Confidence Lawson was third, 0.12 sec slower.
As his first outing in 2019 after a solid winter training program in Beijing, Su said the result is encouraging.
“It proved that the effort made in the season break camp was worthwhile,” said Su, who clocked his best 60m mark of 6.42 sec to win a silver medal at last year’s World Indoor Championships in Birmingham.
“I didn’t expect too much from the first race ... just trying to hone technical details such as the push-off, transition and midway acceleration. It turned out to be a better performance than my first test in 2018.”
Su kicked off last season with a 60m win in Berlin in 6.55 sec before shining at the indoor worlds in UK. Building on that momentum, he tied the 100m Asian mark twice in June at an IAAF meet in Madrid and later at the Diamond League’s Paris meet before concluding his breakout year with an Asian Games gold medal (9.92 sec) in August in Indonesia.
Qatar’s Nigeria-born Femi Ogunode first set the record at the 2015 Asian Athletics Championships, but as the first Asia-born sprinter to join the top echelon, Su has consistently clocked under 10 seconds since first cracking the barrier at Eugene, Oregon in May 2015.
Su will run two more 60m races at the World Indoor Tour’s Birmingham meet on Saturday and at the tour finale in Dusseldorf, Germany, on Feb 20 before switching to the outdoor season in April.
“The main goal on the indoor series for me is to pick up the pace in official competition and to fine-tune my form for the world championships,” said the 29-year-old Guangdong native.
The biennial IAAF World Championships will be held in Qatar from Sept 27-Oct 10 as a major rehearsal for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
As China’s next track star to watch after the retirement of Olympic champion hurdler Liu Xiang, Su is approaching Tokyo 2020 as a defining moment of his career and expects to be a threat in a distance long dominated by Western sprinters.
Helping him defy the odds is American coach Randy Huntington, who began to work with Su at the end of 2017.
Huntington’s fresh regime focusing on details and efficiency played a major part in launching Su to world elite level in 2018 and has earned the trust of his Chinese pupil.
“I never imagined back in 2017 that I could still achieve such a big leap at a relative late stage in my career. He helped me do it and now I am more confident than ever that I can further narrow the gap,” Su said at his winter training camp earlier last month.
Huntington, who built his name by guiding his compatriot long jumper Mike Powell to the current world record of 8.95 meters in 1991, renewed his contract with the Chinese Athletics Association after the 2016 Rio Olympics through Tokyo.
He believes Su has what it takes to go much faster on the bigger stage.
“We re-engineered him from the bottom up. We tore him apart and put him back together again. All I do is giving him the opportunity through my eyes and abilities, and he has absorbed it incredibly quickly,” said Huntington, who also oversees long jumpers on the Chinese national team.