Taiwan’s Lin Yu-tang on Sunday won gold in the men’s long jump at the biannual Asian Indoor Championships in Astana, Kazakhstan, while teammate Chen Kuei-ru won silver in the men’s 60m hurdles.
Lin, 22, broke the Taiwan national record for men’s indoor long jump, with a distance of 8.02m on his third attempt, beating out Indian Jeswin Aldrin’s 7.97m and Chinese Zhang Mingkun’s 7.92m.
Taiwan’s Wen Hua-yu finished fourth with a jump of 7.82m.
Photo courtesy of the Chinese Taipei Athletics Association via CNA
Lin’s gold is Taiwan’s second ever at the championships, after Hsieh Chia-han won the men’s pole vault in 2014 with a jump of 5.15m.
In the men’s 60m hurdles, Chen, 29, finished just 0.03 seconds behind Kazakhstan’s David Yefremov to grab silver, crossing the finish line in 7.68 seconds. Japan’s Shuhei Ishikawa finished third with a time of 7.7 seconds.
Chen’s time was 0.02 seconds short of his own national record of 7.66 seconds, which he set at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Serbia last year.
Photo courtesy of the Asian Athletics Association
“It is a shame that it was so close [to the national record]. I’ll adjust myself after returning to Taiwan,” he said, adding that he had set to break that record in Astana.
Lin and Chen both said they were not used to the weather in the Kazakh capital, where temperatures over the weekend were as low as minus-20°C.
“I took a while to warm up,” Lin said. “At first I couldn’t get into the zone, but by the second and third jumps I was ready to break my record.”
For Chen, it was all about the snow.
“I was really excited to see snow for the first time, so I went outdoors to take a few photos of it and touched it to find out what it feels like,” he said. “But it was too cold, so I only lingered for about five minutes.”
The four-man team from Taiwan also included Li Yun-chen, who broke Taiwan’s national record for men’s indoor triple jump with a leap of 16.28m, but finished sixth in the final.
The 10th Asian Indoor Athletics Championships, held from Friday to Sunday, followed the eighth edition in 2018, after the 2020 edition set to be held in Hangzhou, China, was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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