Tiny Indonesian Triyaningsih showed a clean pair of heels on Thursday as she completed a Southeast Asian (SEA) Games distance double and left her barefoot competitors trailing.
The 147 cm (4 feet 9 inches) runner won the 10,000m in 33min 44.53sec, 77 seconds ahead of Vietnam’s Pham Thi Hue who eschewed shoes at Singapore’s National Stadium.
Pham was not the only runner to go shoeless as her team-mate Hoang Thi Thanh and Myanmar’s Pa Pa also left their trainers in the locker.
Triyaningsih, 28, won the 5,000m on Tuesday and she said two days’ recovery was not enough for her to improve her personal best of 32:49.47 over the longer distance.
“I wanted to break my own record… but following my recovery not too long ago, today for 10,000m my time is good,” she said.
Triyaningsih was one of the athletes to interrupt a run of Thai successes as they scooped five golds including the men’s 4x400m relay and the men’s and women’s sprint hurdles.
Malaysia’s Muhammad Irfan Shamsuddin, who was accused of knocking a team-mate unconscious in January, defended his gold medal in the discus.
“Nonsense,” he said, when asked whether the training incident nearly derailed his career.
“Actually that incident didn’t have any effect on me, so keep training, keep focus and results will come,” said Shamsuddin, who won with a distance of 56.62m.
Indonesia’s Maria Londa added triple jump gold to her long jump title when she leapt 13.75m to win by two centimetres from Vietnam’s Tran Hue Hoa.
Thailand’s Jamras Rittidet won the men’s 110m hurdles in a new SEA Games record of 13.69, while Wallapa Punsoongneun took the women’s 100m hurdles in 3.56.
Thailand, who also won the men’s javelin and women’s pole vault, edged the Philippines in a photo finish to win a thrilling 4x100m men’s relay in 3:06.81.
Duong Van Thai and Do Thi Thao added men’s and women’s 1,500m titles to their 800m crowns as Vietnam annexed the middle distance titles.