The 20th Asian Athletics Championship takes off from Wednesday at Pune. For the first time, Pune is hosting this prestigious event. The five-day event will be formally inaugurated today by Chief Minister of Maharashtra Mr. Prithwiraj Chavan and the function will be presided over by Mr. Ajit Pawar, Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra.At the Balwadi Sports Complex, more than 800 athletes from 43 nations are participating in this event. Since the Gold medallist will have an automatic qualification for the World Championship to be held at Moscow during August this year, most of leading Olympians and top ranked players from China, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Qatar etc will be seen in action. Among these players includes many former World Champions and Asian Games medallist.The host India is having highest members in the team. There are 56 men and 52 women athletes