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China’s athletes delivered a hat-trick of Asian Games golds on the eve of the country’s national day yesterday, with Xie Wenjun leading the way in the men’s 110m hurdles. |
Xie broke home fans’ hearts as he took gold from South Korean Kim Byoung-Jun in 13.36 seconds, while Jamras Rittidet ran a personal best 13.61 to claim an unexpected bronze for Thailand, the country’s first athletics medal of the Games.
China surged to 125 golds, 71 ahead of hosts South Korea, with four days’ competition remaining in the quadrennial regional Olympics. October 1 is the 65th anniversary of the founding of communist China and men’s long jumper Li Jinzhe and women’s pole vaulter Li Ling helped Xie get the party started early with two more golds.
“I’m absolutely delighted to win the gold, especially as tomorrow is National Day, I’m so proud to be here representing the Chinese team,” she said. China now have nine athletics golds at the Incheon Asiad, four more than Qatar, whose army of African-born athletes has dominated the running events so far.
The win for 24-year-old Xie is China’s eighth consecutive Asiad victory in the men’s 110m hurdles and he will now target the 2016 Rio Olympics as he takes on the mantle of former champion Liu Xiang.
Liu became a national hero after winning Olympic gold in Athens in 2004, but hobbled out of the 2008 and 2012 Games with related hamstring injuries and appears a spent force at 31. Xie said he suffered a poor start but pressure from Kim had driven him to recover and finish strongly. Long jumper Li was a class apart from his rivals—the only man on the night to clear eight metres and finishing a full 11 centimetres clear of South Korea’s Kim Deok-Hyeon.
The 25-year-old Li is part of a new generation of Chinese athletes coming through who are not tied exclusively to rigid state training programmes. Some have claimed that hurdler Liu failed to reach his potential because his coaches pressured him to race when he should have been recovering from injuries.
Now foreign coaching is helping bring Chinese athletics up to a global standard, and Li said it was training in the United States that had enabled him to reach new heights this season, including a jump of 8.47m in June—the third longest in the world this year.
“I had a hard time training in the US but it meant I was able to reach 8.47,” he said.
“I’m very happy to win the gold medal today but I’m a little disappointed because I couldn’t beat my personal best.”
Iran’s Olympic silver medallist Ehsan Hadadi confirmed his status as number one Asian discus thrower with a third consecutive Asiad gold medal, beating India’s Vikas Gowda by nearly three metres with 65.11. Hadadi dedicated his medal to Iranian President Hassan Rohani, thanking him for support for his training in the last couple of years.
