On the afternoon of September 20, the Rizal Athletics Stadium in Manila, the capital of the Philippines.

Su Zu, Chen Jian and Shen Yunbao arrived at the stadium ahead of schedule, and after the warm-up, they began to be routinely checked in and roll call by athletes.

This is the second time Suzu has gone abroad to participate in the competition, but to be honest, although Manila is not far from China, a three-hour flight away, the experience is much worse than that of Linz and Vienna.

Since arriving in Manila on the 18th, the entire delegation has only been out of the hotel for the opening ceremony last night, and at other times, all athletes have been allowed to leave the hotel under the mandatory orders of team leader Yu Liwei.

Moreover, the hotels where they stayed were all assigned by the local government, and the special personnel of the Manila Police Office were responsible for security.

Su Zu didn't want to go out for a run again, he stayed in a peaceful and safe environment in the country for a long time, except for the foreign affairs staff and the team leader and coach who understood the situation in advance, everyone else really didn't expect the security environment here to be so bad.

On July 1, the president of the Philippine Amateur Athletics Association was attacked by gangsters on his way to work and was shot twice in the right cheek. In particular, there was an attempted mutiny on 27 July, and rumors of possible retaliatory attacks by terrorists are also worrying following the arrest of terrorist leaders in Southeast Asia.

From the moment I got out of the hotel, I could see many police officers escorting the Asian Championships all the way. Although the Asian Athletics Championships are not very attractive to the top athletes, overall, the specifications are not low. The organizers also attach great importance to this Asian Championships. Since August, the President has personally stepped forward to ask all government agencies to fully support the work of the Organizing Committee of the Asian Athletics Championships.

Su Zu and Chen Jian participated in the same event as Chen Jian in this Asian Championships, both men's 100m sprint, and then both of them were members of the 4×100m relay race.

In addition to registering for the 100-meter individual event, Shen Yunbao also signed up for the men's 200 meters like Yang Guangzong, in addition to He Jun and Yin Hangchao, several relay members have registered for the 200 meters and 400 meters.

This is also the current main team member and relay runner of the Chinese men's sprint event.

Compared with the relatively simple event arrangement in China, the men's sprint event of the Asian Championships is divided into four rounds: qualifying, preliminaries, semifinals and finals.

The men's 100-meter sprint in the morning has already had a round of qualification, and the number of national delegations to participate this time is not large, Su Zu, Chen Jian and Shen Yunbao have directly entered the official preliminaries, and the morning qualifying round is mainly to face some other member countries that are more backward in the level of track and field sprinting in Asia.

Four athletes were selected for the two groups of qualifiers in the morning, and they were added to the preliminaries.

At 17:25 in the afternoon, the men's 100m preliminaries began, plus the 4 athletes in the qualifying round, a total of 38 athletes, divided into 5 preliminaries groups.

The top two athletes in each group will automatically qualify for the semi-finals, and then the top six athletes from the remaining groups will advance to the semi-finals of both groups.

After the start of the group preliminaries, with the current strength level of Su Zu and Chen Jian, they easily qualified for the semifinals.

Shen Yunbao's group of players is relatively strong, did not get the top two results in the group, only got the fourth, fortunately, the overall result is good, and finally in the six players in the substitute, also successfully entered the semi-finals with a time of 10.51 seconds.

The semi-finals take place after the men's and women's 1500m finals, at 6:50 p.m.

The lights in the Rizal Stadium are gradually lit up, illuminating the entire stadium.

Before the game, Yu Liwei and Li Zhizhong gathered Su Zu, Chen Jian and Shen Yunbao and made a brief explanation.

"You guys have to pay attention to the semi-finals, I observed with Coach Li in the preliminaries just now, and there are still a few players with good strength. Especially Shen Yunbao, you ran a little badly in the preliminaries. With his hands behind his back, Yu Liwei swept over the three athletes who had already entered the 100-meter semi-finals.

This competition is much more stressful for the team leaders and coaches than before, one aspect is the local safety factors, people outside the country, everything has to be careful, and the organizers must be coordinated. Another aspect is that at the 12th Asian Championships held in Colombo, Sri Lanka last year, the Chinese track and field team won a record of 26 golds, 13 silvers and 3 bronzes. The results are better than last time, but they can't be too far behind.

"The two players in Shen Yunbao's group should be strong contenders for medals, and I just saw them in the preliminaries, and it seems that they still have reservations."

Li Zhizhong said and glanced at Shen Yunbao, he is not Shen Yunbao's head coach, but he is the only one among the 100-meter coaches from the Asian Championships this time. The number of people participating in the Asian Championships this time is small, and Li Zhizhong is still qualified because Su Zugang broke the national record.

"The two of them should have released water in the second half of the journey." Shen Yunbao nodded and said, although he didn't run well in the preliminaries, as an old sprinter, it is still very accurate to see the level of a runner in the competition, and in the end, whether he is waterproof or not, whether he has the ability to go further, can basically be judged.

"One is Cherohal from Kazakhstan and the other is Al Yami from Saudi Arabia, and I feel like both of them can run 10.30 seconds." Li Zhizhong continued, "There is also Japan's rookie Shingo Kawada, I feel that the strength is also good. ”

can run in 10.30 seconds, there is already a certain threat to the current domestic players, at least in the first half of the year, Su Zu Chen Jian ran in the Grand Prix is just this result.

Now, in the just-concluded National Championships, both of them have made a big breakthrough, and their strength should be much stronger than before. However, sprinting, affected by the venue environment, personal state, psychological factors, etc., can run 10.20 seconds once or twice in the final, but it is difficult to guarantee this result every time.

After listening to Li Zhizhong's analysis, Su Zu and Chen Jian's expressions were much more solemn.

After Yu Liwei left, Li Zhizhong walked up to the two and whispered: "There will not be too many gold medals this time, you two are double guarantees, this men's 100-meter gold medal cannot be lost." ”

After speaking, he patted Su Zu on the shoulder again and gave him a look, the tacit understanding between the two masters and apprentices naturally knew the importance of the words. Athletics competitions, not individual events such as tennis and billiards, are inseparable from the support of backing no matter what. If you want to go further, you must continue to have better and more stable results to support.

Although Su Zu knows that his state must be able to play more stable, but at this time he can't say, the current Asian first-class players are basically around 10.20 seconds, last year's Asian Games men's sprint champion Salfa won the championship with a time of 10.24 seconds, although Su Zu is confident, but it is far from being able to treat these people as nothing.

"Come on!" Li Zhizhong exhorted, he has always been more at ease with Su Zu's state, but he cares about it, this is Su Zu's first international heavyweight event, and its significance is naturally self-evident.

At 18:50, the semifinals began.

Chen Jian and Shen Yunbao were in the first group of the semifinals, and sure enough, in this group, the Kazakh player Cherohhar mentioned by Shen Yunbao ran a time of 10.29 seconds, only 2 percent slower than Chen Jian's 10.27 seconds. And it's a semi-final, and no one dares to guarantee whether the other party has reservations.

Suzu's other Saudi Arabian Al Yami, whom he met in the semi-finals, was also very strong. At least in the men's 100 meters, except for him and Chen Jian, who can overwhelm others, the other current sprinters in China are probably worse.

After the semi-finals, the list of eight players who will play the final tomorrow night at 7 p.m. will be released soon.

1. Su Zu / China / 10.20 seconds

2. Chen Jian/China/10.27 seconds

3. Mubarak Al Yami / Saudi Arabia / 10.28 seconds

4. Cherohar / Kazakhstan / 10.29 seconds

5. Shingo Kawada / Japan / 10.41 seconds

6. Mamat Fahan/Bahrain/10.43 seconds

7. Suwan Pratep/Thailand/10.44 seconds

8. Shen Yunbao/China/10.47 seconds