Taiwan picked up three more medals yesterday at the Asian Games in Guangzhou, China, as Ko Pin-yi earned a bronze in the men’s nine-ball pool competition, while in the women’s eight-ball pool competition, Chang Shu-han and Chou Chieh-yu also earned bronze medals in matches 23 and 24 respectively.
Meanwhile, China was disqualified from the men’s 4x100m medley relay at the Guangzhou Asian Games pool after an illegal change involving the second swimmer, marking a contentious end to an otherwise dominant performance by the hosts.
China appeared to be the winner when Lu Zhiwu touched ahead of his Japanese opponent at Aoti Aquatics Center. However, pandemonium soon turned to silence when a video review showed that Lu’s teammate, Wang Shuai, dived into the water before Sun Xiaolei had touched.
Japan was elevated to gold with a time of 3 minutes, 34.10 seconds.
There was no immediate backlash from the crowd, which appeared confused and gradually filed out of the stadium.
Chinese rowers picked up six of the seven golds on the last day of competition, and the Chinese women won the first dragon boat race as China moved toward its goal of topping the record 166 gold medals it collected at the last edition in Doha.
South Korea added three more gold medals in shooting to lift its tally to 13 on the range — the most in a single sport the South Koreans have ever collected at a single Asian Games.
The gold medal that will bring most joy to the country, and to anyone on the team who hasn’t already done military service, is the baseball gold medal. Cleveland Indians outfielder Choo Shin-soo and his South Korean teammates qualified for today’s final with a 7-1 semi-final win over China.
Gold medals at the Asian Games for South Korea earn a waiver for military service.
Choo hit a solo home run in the third inning and plans to “just do what I’ve been doing all along” in the final. He has three home runs at the tournament so far.
“I am only thinking about winning,” he said.
Indonesia won its first gold of the games when its men’s dragon boat crew took the 1,000m final.
Kazakhstan picked up its second weightlifting gold medal when Ilya Ilyin won the men’s 94kg division.
While South Korean swimming star Park Tae-hwan has won three gold medals in the freestyle, Japan’s four-time Olympic breaststroke champion Kosuke Kitajima has left it to the final night of the pool program to win a gold in Guangzhou. After two fourth-place finishes, he helped Japan qualify fastest for the final of the medley relay.
One event China won’t dominate is cricket, where the South Asian countries are strong.
Bangladesh’s women raced to a comfortable nine-wicket win over China to reach the Asian Games final. China was dismissed for just 34 runs, and Bangladesh needed fewer than seven overs to reach the target. Title favorite Pakistan was playing Japan in the other semifinal.
More than 10,000 athletes from 45 countries are competing in 42 sports in Guangzhou, at venues scattered across the city of 10 million people.
Police and security officials are confident they can keep them all safe. And just to prove it, they released some startling figures yesterday to show that crime doesn’t pay in this southern city at the moment.
He Guangping, the deputy director general of the Department of Public Security of Guandong, said that 125 checkpoints on the region’s highways had pulled over more than 2.7 million vehicles since Oct. 10, interviewed more than 5 million passengers and nabbed “1,740 criminal suspects and 207 wanted criminals.”
Also confiscated were almost 2 million pieces of fireworks and thousands of kilograms of chemicals. A ticket scalping syndicate was also busted.
“We believe we can deliver not only a safe Asian Games, but a public-friendly one,” He said.
Meanwhile, Chinese star -hurdler Liu Xiang is in Guangzhou for the Asian Games, not that he really wants it widely known.
Liu, the pre-Games face of the Beijing Olympics two years ago, arrived in time to see the host nation collect its 100th gold medal in Guangzhou after six days of competition.
There was none of the fanfare or frenzy which preceded Liu’s buildup to Beijing, where an Achilles injury forced the then-world and Olympic champion to limp off the track after momentarily getting into the starting blocks for his heat at the Bird’s Nest Stadium.
Again he’s one of the biggest stars of the Chinese event, although this time the public well knows he’s still on the comeback from injury.
Meanwhile, Timor-Leste beach volleyball player Fxl Alianva had some comments on getting used to the team’s uniform for the Games.
“I’m still not used to wearing a bikini. In Timor-Leste, women are not allowed to expose their bodies in public, so we always wear trousers and a long-sleeved shirt in training,” she said.
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