Athletics Day 2 Morning Session Preview: Medals galore

(BEIJING, September 9) -- Many medals are up for grabs on the second day of the Athletics competition at the National Stadium on Tuesday.

Women will be fighting for gold in the Women's Discus F54-56 and F35/36, Women's Long Jump F44 and Women's 100m T11 and T12 while the men will be battling it out on the field in the Shot Put F57/58 (wheelchair athletes with different levels of spinal cord injuries and amputations) on the track in the 100m T36 (ambulant athletes with different levels of cerebral palsy).

China will have three of its athletes in the Women's Discus F54-56, among them Wang Ting and Chen Liping, gold and bronze medalists from the Athens 2004 Paralympics respectively. They will have stiff competition from veteran Paralympian 55 year old Marianne Buggenhagen of Germany, competing in her fifth Paralympic Games. Buggenhagen won bronze in the Women's Shot Put - T54-56 but she will be looking to add more medals to her personal collection in various events at the Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996, Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004 Paralympics eight (8 gold, 1 silver and 1 bronze).

Another attention grabber will be Athens 2004 gold medalist Adria Santos of Brazil who will compete in the Women's 100m T11. Santos already has 10 Paralympic medals to her name and she will be competing in her fifth Paralympics. Alongside her on the track will be Athens 2004 Paralympic silver medalist Wu Chunmiao of China.

Two more 100m medals will be contested, the Women's 100m T12 and the Men's 100m T36. The women's race will have reigning silver and bronze medalists from 2004, Volha Zinkevich of Belarus and Maria Jose Alvez of Brazil, as well as 2007 world champion Oxana Boturchuk of Ukraine who had the best qualifying time (12.43s) from the semifinals on Monday. The men will line up with So Wa Wai of Hong Kong, China who was the silver medalist in Athens 2004, gold medalist in Sydney 2000 and earlier this year broke the world record with a run of 12.16s in Osaka, Japan.