I live in china and was watching the meet on CCTV5+. Wu Yanni is ultrahyped here on social media (wechat) because she's attractive and has a bit of sass so i was particularly interested in seeing how she would do and she made a big deal about wanting to win here.
CCTV5+ is supposed to be live but there's actually a delay and when they showed the final Wu was nowhere to be seen. They somehow managed to edit her out of the race! There were only 7 runners shown and her teammate Lin Yuwei was shown winning. There was no showing or discussion of what had happened before the final on the broadcast. I didn't find out until the next day.
In the race, Wu clearly false started....i mean she really jumped the gun. The runner from India next to her was next to move but she had barely lifted her fingers and Wu was already a step down the lane. The starter/judges called a false start on both of them even though it was pretty clear that Wu jumped and then the Indian gal and the rest of the field reacted. So there was a big scene with the judges and replays. I have no idea what kind of argument Wu was giving because that was as clear a false start as I've ever seen. The Indian runner was claiming that Wu's clear jump caused her reaction so she shouldn't be flagged with a false start.
The judges decided to restart the race leaving Wu and Yarraji in under protest. The final was run. Lin Yuwei won handily with Wu 2nd and Yarraji 3rd. Wu ran around the track with the chinese flag acting like she's gotten a silver but the judges reviewed again and DQ'd her for the false start and that moved Yarraji into silver with Tanaka from JPN getting bronze.
I was astonished that they let Wu run in the restart. Her false start was blatantly obvious, it wasn't a close call. Even more bizarre is that the TV broadcast found some sort of way to completely eliminate Wu from the competition and no mention of the false start. Loss of face and all that for China I guess. But uncut replays were all over social media the next day.
Pretty crazy stuff. The meet is a bit ho-hum. No spectacular performances. The men's steeple was won by Sable of India in 8:19. Of particular note was the presence of 8:09 guy John Koech running for Bahrain. Dude was visibly heavy and ran only 10th in 9:03. You'd think Bahrain could have sent someone better and in shape.
If you're interested in results you can go here:
Competition Schedule & Results | The 19th Asian Games (hangzhou2022.cn)
