Five individual Olympic champions were originally scheduled to compete in the IAAF Japan Grand Prix, Osaka, Japan. However, Koji Murofushi withdrew a day before the event due to a cold he had caught a week ago. Of the four remaining champions in the field, Justin Gatlin and Liu Xiang won their events, while Olga Kuzenkova and Tim Mack suffered severe defeats.

Sprint quality shines

The meeting suffered from a number of withdrawals from key athletes. In addition to the Hammer thrower Koji Murofushi, sprinter Shingo Suetsugu and middle distance runners Jolanda Ceplak and Nicole Teter also did not compete. Other big names missing from the start lists were Maurice Wignall (110mH), Joey Woody (400mH), and Kareem Streete Thompson (100m).

However, the quality of Justin Gatlin and Liu Xiang shone through as they dominated their events. While Gatlin won the 100m by 13/100th seconds, Liu won his specialty, the 110m Hurdles by an even larger margin of 41/100th of a second.

Brian Lewis in lane five had the best start, but during the acceleration phase Gatlin took over the lead and pulled away to win in 10.15 ahead of Lewis, who finished second in 10.28, while Obadele Thompson of Barbados was another 2/100 seconds back in third. "This is a good result for the beginning of the season. Sure I said I will always run sub- 10, but that will depends on the condition. I will run faster time in the coming month," said Gatlin after the race. He also said, "I will have to get used to the start (command) in the Japanese language."

With the withdrawal of injured Shingo Suetsugu at the last minute, the best Japanese in the field was Noguharu Asahara who has the personal best of 10.02. As expected Asahara was the first Japanese finisher but with the slow time of 10.35; he was fourth over all.

World record in his sights

Liu Xiang started well, but Arend Watkins was close behind him until he hit the fifth hurdle. From that point on Liu completely dominated the event and won with 13.12, the world's leading time of 2005.

"Because I expected to run around 13.20, 13.12 is satisfactory result," confirmed Liu Xiang. "I have not done intensive training since Athens. I was initially hoping to relax this year, but because there are important meets like the World Championships and Grand Prix meets, I will go hard again this year."

"I have been asked about breaking the World record since I tied it in Athens. I would like to break it and I think I can do it. But I am only 22 now and I expect to peak around 26. What I need to do now is to train hard without getting injured. I like to compete for a long time and contribute to the excellence of the Asian Athletics."

Finishing second in the race with 13.53 was former Japanese national record holder Masato Naito. For Naito it was third best performance of his career. Considering that season is still quite early, Naito's hope of regaining the national record may be quite realistic.

Surprise defeat for Kuzenkova

Russia's women's Olympic Hammer champion Olga Kuzenkova finished distant second to Zhang Wenxiu of China who threw the Hammer for 72.34m. Kuzenkova only recorded 69.77m. It was near a personal best for Zhang who was seventh in Athens last summer but is still a junior, having been born in 1986. Her best is 72.42m from last year (Chengdu, 3 April 04). The local fans who were hoping to see Yuka Murofushi's fourth national hammer record were disappointed. Koji's sister was only able to throw the Hammer to 62.43m, which was only good for seventh place.

Olympic Pole Vault champion Tim Mack did even worse than Kuzenkova. He was only fifth in his event, as Australia's Dmitriy Markov won in 5.75m. Again Japanese fans hopes were dashed as Daichi Sawano failed to improve on his four days old national record.

Alleyne Francique and Jun Osakada went one-two in the men's 400m as expected. However, what was not expected was the performance of Japan's Yuzo Kanemaru, who finished third. Kanemaru, who has the best of 45.89, is a high school senior, having born on Sept 18, 1987. He is a national high school record holder, having broken the previous record of 45.94 by Dai Tamesue last year.

Tamesue ran his specialty, 400m Hurdles, and was leading at 300m but slowed down markedly after the ninth hurdle and was caught by the 10th hurdle. In fact Tamesue was not even the first Japanese home. That honour went to Kenji Narisako who also cracked the World Championships "A" standard. Narisako edged Tamesue by 1/100 seconds.

Felix wins slow women's dash

The women's Olympic 200m silver medallist Allyson Felix won the women's 100m in a slow 11.30; she was 9/100th seconds ahead of Angela Daigle.

After the excellent start by Tomoko Ishida, Daigle took over the lead and it looked as if she is heading toward the victory. However, Felix caught and passed Daigle in the last 10m.

The women's 800m field was considerable weakened by withdrawal of Russia's Svetlana Cherkasova, American Nicole Teter and most of all Jolanda Ceplak, the World Indoor record holder from Slovenia. Thus Japan's Miho Sugimori, who was hoping to be dragged to a fast time had to be content with just the win (2:02.79).

With a winning time of only 3:41.37, the men's 1500m was also very slow, but the Japanese national record holder, Fumiaki Kobayashi finished second in the event, ahead of three out of four Kenyans in the field, a rare occurence. With Kobayashi and especially Sugimori, the middle distance in Japan, perhaps, is on the resurgence. The race was won by Kenyan Kiptum Bernard Kiptanui.

A Japanese victory came in the women's Long Jump where Maho Hanaoka leapt to 6.82m. It would have been a national record tying jump, except that wind was over the allowable 2m/s.