Shanti Pereira became the first woman to win back-to-back Asian Games 200m titles on Sunday (27 September), coming from behind in the rain at Paloma Mizuho Stadium in Nagoya to win in 22.78s.
“Coming into today, I knew it was my day. Nothing or no one was going to stop me from getting it,” the 30-year-old said after the final.
China’s Chen Yujie took silver in 22.93s and India’s Harita Bhadra won bronze in 23.20s. Five men have retained the 200m title since the Games began in 1951. No woman had done it until Sunday.
How the final was won
Chen, a teenager, was quickest out of the blocks with a reaction time of 0.15s. She had beaten Pereira to 100m gold two nights earlier.
Pereira, drawn in lane 7, reeled her in down the home straight and crossed the line 0.15s clear. The time matched the season’s best she ran at the Oman Athletics Grand Prix earlier this month, which was already the fastest 200m in Asia going into the Games. She had qualified fastest from Saturday’s heats in 23.10s.
She did it on tired legs. The final was her fifth race of the Games, after the 100m heats, semi-finals and final and the 200m heats, and she said nerves had kept her from sleeping well. She still told her coach Luis Cunha, who usually watches from the warm-up track, to take a seat in the stadium for this one.
Pereira said she kept replaying a line from swimmer Gan Ching Hwee, who has won three silvers in Nagoya: “If you have a lane, you have a chance.”
Four Asian Games medals
The gold follows her 100m silver on Friday (25 September), when she ran 11.21s, 0.01s outside her own national record. Chen won that race in a Games record 11.06s, breaking the 11.15s mark Sri Lanka’s Susanthika Jayasinghe set in 2002.
That takes Pereira to four Asian Games medals, all from the last two editions. At Hangzhou in 2023 she won 100m silver, Singapore’s first Asian Games athletics medal in 49 years, and then 200m gold, the country’s first athletics title at the Games since Chee Swee Lee won the 400m in 1974.
Pereira was back on the track later on Sunday for the 4x100m relay heats with Amanda Loo, Elizabeth-Ann Tan and Kerstin Ong. The quartet ran a season’s best 45.12s but finished fourth in their heat and ninth overall, missing the final.
