Indian (Malayalee) hurdler Joseph Abraham wins gold

Indian hurdler Joseph Abraham wins gold

Indian hurdler Abraham may be a pocket-sized athlete,  but he is a dynamo  on the tracks... he proved just that by clinching gold yesterday Joseph Abraham is definitely not built like an athlete. At just a little over 5 ft,he was the shortest in the line-up of the remaining seven taller and more accomplished runners in the men's 400m hurdles final of the Asian Games yesterday.
Joseph Abraham is all smiles after becoming the first India
athlete to win a gold medal at the Asian Games. pic/AFPThe top four finishers
of the 400m men's hurdles at the last Asian Games in Doha were alongside
Abraham, dwarfing him with their height that ranged from 5ft 6inches to 6 ft
5
inches. Japan's Kenji Narisako, China's Yan Meng, Japan's Naohiro Kawakita and Kazakhstan's Yevgeniy Meleshenko had finished in
that order exactly
four years ago, with Abraham nowhere near them then. However
he not only
went above them all, but did so in fine fashion leading the race
almost
from
the half-way mark to the finish. He even created history in the
bargain by
becoming the first men's athletic gold medallist in the Asian
Games.While
talking to MiD DAY
about being the shortest in
yesterday's line-up, the 29-year-old Kottayam athlete said:
"Not only in this
line-up,
I'm the shortest in Asia in the event. But it
doesn't matter.
World No 1 400m
hurdler Bershawn
Jackson too is of the same height as
me, so height is no problem," he said. Just
for the record, American Bershawn Jackson is
a good
5ft 8in while Joseph
looks barely 5ft 4in, but that's not what
mattered last
night.Also, the fact
that Japan's defending champion Narisako was in the
line-up, didn't matter to
Abraham. "I've been watching and running
alongside
him for sometime now. Even in
last year's Asian Championships
I was not too
far behind him. And then after I
ran my heat and I saw him
running his heat,
I was even more confident of beating
him in the final.
I was sure I'd win
some medal, but my coach Rajinder Singh told me 'if
you have to get a
medal then let it be gold'," said Abraham, who clocked his
season's best
of
49.96 to clinch gold. A thigh injury had forced Abraham to miss
the
Beijing
Olympics, but London Games is all that's on his mind right now. "I
should
not be over-confident. I must now focus on the 2012 London
Olympics," he
said.


Congratulations