{"id":1798,"date":"2018-08-30T16:17:00","date_gmt":"2018-08-30T16:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/brussels-gong-retains-shot-put-title\/"},"modified":"2018-08-30T16:17:00","modified_gmt":"2018-08-30T16:17:00","slug":"brussels-gong-retains-shot-put-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/brussels-gong-retains-shot-put-title\/","title":{"rendered":"Brussels: Gong Retains Shot Put Title"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Shaking out the rust with an 18.70m opening round effort, Gong improved to 19.39 in the second round and 19.56 in the third to take control.<\/p>\n<p>German Christina Schwanitz, the European silver medallist, responded well, reaching 19.50m to shadow the Chinese in second.<\/p><\/div>\n<div>But Saunders, who last competed in Monaco where she finished third, responded even better, launching a towering toss that landed at 19.64m on the elevated landing area in the center of the Belgian capital&#8217;s historic Grand Place. It was just three centimetres shy of her season&#8217;s best and immediately put the pressure on the reigning world champion.<\/div>\n<div>Energised, Gong improved to 19.61m in the fourth round, before following up with a 19.83m effort that deflated the rest of field, sealing Gong&#8217;s 11th straight victory, her second straight Diamond League Trophy and a winner&#8217;s check for $US50,000.<\/div>\n<div>Neither Saunders nor Schwanitz improved over the final two rounds to finish second and third with Aliona Dubitskaya of Belarus, the European bronze medallist, rounding out the top-four with a 19.01m best. Fittingly for a season-ending competition, the Brussels street shot marked the first time this year that four women threw beyond 19 metres in the same competition.<\/div>\n<div>Further back, Pole Paulina Guba, the European champion, was fifth with 18.54.<\/div>\n<div><i>Bob Ramsak for the IAAF and the IAAF Diamond League<\/i><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lijiao Gong successfully defended her Diamond League title in the shot put, prevailing in a...","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"city":[],"class_list":["post-1798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1798\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1798"},{"taxonomy":"city","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diamondleague.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/city?post=1798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}