Taiwan’s Chan Yung-jan (詹詠然) and Hsieh Su-wei (謝淑薇) defied the odds yesterday to defeat China and claim gold in the final of the women’s team tennis at the Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea, while Chou Chia-chen (周佳溱) claimed the gold medal in the women’s singles of the bowling.
There were also medals in two other disciplines for Taiwanese athletes, with Kao Yu-chuan (高玉娟) claiming silver in the wushu women’s sanda 60kg competition and Huang Shih-hsu bronze in the women’s 69kg weightlifting, lifting Taiwan to seventh place on the medals table.
Taiwan had entered the competition unseeded and somewhat in disarray after a public spat before the Games between Hsieh and Chan, but the two players put their differences aside to lead Taiwan to victory in matches against Nepal, Thailand, Kazakhstan and heavily favored top seeds China.
Photo: Lin Cheng-kung, Taipei Times
World No. 226 Chan faced world No. 144 Duan Yingying (段瑩瑩) of China in the first singles rubber of the final on Center Court at the Yeorumul Tennis Courts, but the Taiwanese did not let the disparity in their rankings affect her as she battled to a pivotal 7-6 (10/8), 7-6 (7/4) victory in 2 hours, 13 minutes.
World No. 160 Hsieh then faced world No. 80 Zheng Jie (鄭潔) in the second singles rubber and she claimed the first set 6-3 in just 36 minutes, before the Chinese player took control to complete a 3-6, 7-5, 6-2 victory in 2 hours, 15 minutes.
That meant the title hinged on the final doubles rubber, with the Taiwanese duo now having the advantage, with doubles world No. 4 Hsieh and No. 31 Chan facing Chinese pairing world No. 28 Zheng and world No. 50 Zhang Shuai (張帥).
Photo: AFP
True to form, the Taiwanese duo completed a 6-2, 7-5 victory in 1 hour, 35 minutes to upset the odds and claim the gold along with teammates Chan Hao-ching (詹皓晴) and Chan Chin-wei (詹謹偉).
In the bowling, Chou scored 1291 points in six games to beat Singapore’s New Hui-fen to the gold by a 20-point margin, with another Singaporean, Daphne Tan, collecting the bronze.
Kao lost the sanda 60kg final 2-0 to China’s Wang Cong to collect the silver, while Huang lifted 108 kg in the snatch and 125kg in the clean and jerk to take the bronze with a combined total of 233kg.
Photo: Lin Cheng-kung, Taipei Times
China’s Xiang Yanmei smashed the Asian Games record by lifting 268kg to take gold, while North Korea’s Ryo Un-hui lifted 262kg for the silver.
Japan’s Kosuke Hagino won his fourth swimming gold, but China ruled the pool as they shot out to a big lead on the medals table at the Asian Games yesterday.
Hagino, 20, put in a strong final freestyle leg to add the 400m medley to his 200m medley, 200m freestyle and 4x200m freestyle titles in Incheon, South Korea.
Photo: AFP
“That was hard work, I felt like I could be in a bit of bother,” Hagino told reporters. “I didn’t expect to feel that tired, but I kept it together somehow. Obviously the freestyle [leg] did bail me out.”
However, the night belonged as much to China, who rounded off another dominant day of competition with four swimming golds, including the women’s 200m freestyle and butterfly.
Shen Duo won the freestyle race, Jiao Liuyang topped the butterfly and Fu Yuanhui took the 100m backstroke, before China’s men combined for a 4x100m freestyle win over Japan.
It left China on 59 gold medals, well ahead of South Korea on 26 and on their way to topping the table for the ninth straight Asian Games.
China scooped up five out of seven golds in their home-grown martial art of wushu and another five from seven as the rowing competition got under way.
Weightlifters Xiang Yanmei and Tian Tao both grabbed gold, while Olympic superstar Zou Kai ended China’s wait for a men’s gymnastics gold with a world class floor routine.
China have made a poor start in the men’s division, slipping to third in the team competition and not even making the podium in the individual all-round event.
Five-time Olympic gold medalist Zou, 26, went some way to making amends on the floor, surviving a couple of slight early stumbles to score 15.533 with the most difficult routine of the night.
Liao Junlin added another men’s gold for China on the rings, while for the women, Yao Jinnan added an uneven bars gold to her victory in the all-round event on Tuesday, forcing world champion Huang Huidan into second place.
There was gold for North Korea in the women’s vault as Hong Un-jong turned in a dazzling pair of runs to beat Uzbek veteran Oksana Chusovitina into silver in a rerun of the 2008 Olympic Games final.
Hong, cheered loudly by a small, but vocal band of North Korean athletes and officials, attacked the vault with power and grace, executing her dismounts with wonderful precision.
On a busy night at the Namdong Gymnasium, Japan’s Masayoshi Yamamoto took gold on the pommel horse, ahead of Uzbek teenager Abdulla Azimov.
Zou, China’s most decorated Olympian, looked glum as he waited for his score to be announced and afterwards said he felt he was well off the magnificent standard he set at the 2012 Olympics.
“I’m not 100 percent satisfied with my performance on the floor,” Zou said. “I’m not in the best condition compared with when I was competing in London.”
Teammate Huang Yuguo, who only managed fourth in the individual all-round, made it a Chinese one-two with a score of 15.300.
Japan’s Yuya Kamoto, fresh from his gold medal in Tuesday’s all-round, turned in another tight routine to take bronze on 14.933.
South Korean Shin Dong-hyen delighted the crowd with a superbly performed routine — the only one to score 9.0 for execution — to raise hopes of a home medal, but Kamato pipped him with the last routine of the night.
Meanwhile, Qatar’s women’s basketball team pulled out over a ban on headscarves in international competition in the sport, prompting harsh words from a senior official.
“FIBA [the International Basketball Federation] didn’t let our players play with the headscarves and so we had to withdraw from the tournament,” said Ahlam al-Mana, head of Qatar’s women’s sports committee. “What happened today is against International Olympic Committee goals, which are meant to include countries from different cultures, and also it’s against the slogan of the Asian Games in Incheon which is ‘Diversity Shines here.’”
Narantuya Chuluunbadrakh became the first Mongolian to win an Asian Games shooting gold medal when she clinched the women’s 50m rifle prone title.
The 29-year-old from Ulan Bator finished the final with 624.1 points, just four off the world record of 628 set by Germany’s Beate Gauss at this year’s world championships.
“Our previous best was a team silver four years ago, so this is really, really special,” she said. “More so, since this is also my best score.”
Japanese cyclists Seiichiro Nakagawa and Tomoyuki Kawabata took gold and silver in the men’s individual sprint, while there was a rare success for Singapore when Joseph Schooling won their first men’s swimming gold since 1982 with an Asian Games record 51.76 seconds in the 100m butterfly.
“I’ve just enrolled as a freshman at the University of Texas,” Schooling said. “I’m just happy to be sitting here. I’ve only been training one day for the last four weeks. I’ve not really been doing much to be honest. It’s a huge step.”
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