Fernandez and Turaya wins Grand Prix in Portugal 
ECUADOR, 15/04/2005. Rio Maior, Portugal – European champion Francisco Fernandez and Belarussian Margaryta Turava fought off a tremendous assault by strong Chinese squads to lift the men’s and women’s 20km titles yesterday at the second leg of the IAAF Race Walking Challenge 2005, the Grande Premio Internacional en Marcha Atletica (2 April).
The races were of the top-most quality which was all the more remarkable as the weather conditions were terrible with heavy rain soaking the competitors.
“With the high quality field we had assembled everything went much as expected," said Jorge Miguel the Meeting Director. "Ryta Turava produced a very good race which was the superb surprise of the day. Spain’s Francisco Fernandez and the Australian Nathan Deakes produced excellent races at their expected good level."
The men’s 20km witnessed a close battle between Fernandez who is the reigning European 20km champion and was second at the last World Championships and Olympic Games, and Australia’s Olympic bronze medallist Nathan Deakes, with this pair holding off a strong posse of Chinese race walkers.
Fernandez who had his coach Poland's four-time Olympic champion Robert Korzeniowski at the side of the course for encouragement crossed in 1:19:02 with Deakes, who won the opening Challenge race in Tijuana last month, second in 1:19:15. Third was China’s Chaohong Yu, who was also under 1:20, with a 1:19:39 performance.
Last year's winner Alessandro Gandellini of Italy was 15th in a season's best (1:23:27).
There were 41 starters from which 34 completed the course, four did not finish and another three were disqualified.
Both Athens Olympic champions are off the pace
Both reigning Olympic champions who were competing yesterday were well off the pace with 12th places for both Ivano Brugnetti of Italy (1:22:50) and Athanasía Tsoumeléka of Greece (1:35:11) in the men's and women's races respectively. However, not too much should be read into these efforts as Brugnetti's time was an improvement on his Tijuana performance (1:22:50), and it was the Greek's opening race of the year.
Results
Men 20km
1 Francisco Fernandez ESP 1:19:02
2 Nathan Deakes AUS 1:19:15
3 Chaohong Yu CHN 1:19:39
4 Yunfeng Liu CHN 1:20:10
5 Aigars Fadejevs LET 1:20:55
6 Ronghua Lu CHN 1:21:06
7 Juan Molina ESP 1:21:09
8 Hatem Ghoula TUN 1:22:04
9 João Vieira POR 1:22:09
10 Sílviu Casandra ROM 1:22:14
Women 20km
1 Margaryta Turava BLR 1:27:19
2 Hongjuan Song CHN 1:29:01
3 Liping Wang CHN 1:30:06
4 Yanmei Bai CHN 1:30:16
5 Claudia Steff ROM 1:30:41
6 Elisa Rigaudo ITA 1:30:48
7 Jane Saville AUS 1:31:06
8 Vera Santos POR 1:31:30
9 Larisa Emelianova RUS 1:32:51
10 Norica Cimpean ROM 1:33:06
IAAF Courtesy
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