Top Asian sprinters to square off in May

Zhang Peimeng

Beijing, April 29 (IANS)

Top Chinese sprinter Zhang Peimeng is expected to square off against Japanese teenager Yoshihide Kiryu at the World Challenge Series in Kawasaki, Japan, next month.

Although Qatar's Nigeria-born Femi Ogunode became the fastest man in the continent in last year's Asian Games when he clocked 9.93 seconds in 100 metres, the duel for the best Asian-born sprinter is yet to be settled.

In the meantime, both Zhang and Kiryu are looked upon to beat the 10-second barrier as the Asian-born athletes have worked hard for years to improve Japanese Koji Ito's 10-second record set in the 1998 Asiad.

Zhang, 28, will warm up for the event as he runs a 200m in China's National Grand Prix in Jinan on Wednesday. He will try to recover his best form which brought him a personal best of 10 seconds at the 2013 Moscow World Championships.

Kiryu also jumped into the spotlight in 2013 when he equalled the world junior record of 10.01 seconds in Hiroshima as a 17-year-old high school student. Last month, he ran a wind-assisted unofficial 9.87 at a meet in Austin, Texas.