BUSAN, South Korea, 10 October — Salem Mouled Al-Mowallad won the men’s triple jump gold medal here yesterday to give Saudi Arabia their fourth track and field victory of the tournament. Al-Mowallad came up with a best leap of 16.60 meters to pull off a narrow win over Lao Jianfeng of China (16.57m) with Japan’s Takashi Komatsu at 16.34m.
Kuwait’s Fawzi Al-Shammari powered to victory in the men’s 400 meters, giving the emirate a historic first Asian Games gold medal in athletics at Busan. Al-Shammari, who dipped at the line to beat Saudi rival Hamdan O. Al-Bishi by 0.02 seconds, will try to complete a gold medal double in the 200 today.
In the men’s 400m final, Al-Bishi, 21, stormed from the blocks and seemed to have the race sealed, before Al-Shammari pushed his aching body for one last effort to win by a nose and equal the games record of 44.93sec.
"I accelerated hard at 300 because I knew Al-Bishi could turn up the pace in the last 100. I just pushed and pushed. For me it’s been a great season and my goal after some time off is the world championships in Paris next year," Al-Shammari said.
Al-Bishi, a former world junior champion, admitted he misjudged the race, pushing too hard early and "in the last 100m I just couldn’t accelerate".
