BUSAN, South Korea, 9 October — Saudi Arabia dominated the second day of Asian Games track action yesterday as Jamal Al-Saffar and Hadi Soua’an Al-Somaily won gold in the 100 meters and 400 hurdles after Makhld Al-Otaibi’s 10,000 meters win on Monday.
China, India and Kazakhstan also struck double gold, while Sri Lanka’s top runner Susantika Jayasinghe won the women’s 100 meters and Japan’s Koji Murofishi retained his hammer title. But it was the Saudis who stole the limelight by following up their first athletics gold at the games on Monday with two more. Asian champion Al-Saffar won the 100 meters in 10.24 seconds ahead of Japanese favorite Nobuhara Asahara.
"The result was a surprise for me and for everyone," said Al-Saffar. "I respect Asahara but I worked and prepared very hard for this and got the result for my efforts."
The Asian record of Japan’s Koji Ito, who ran 10 seconds flat in the semifinal four years ago before going on to take gold, never looked like being threatened after a slow start.
Saudi Arabia’s Al-Somaily won the men’s 400 hurdles in a games record of 48.42 seconds ahead of Qatar’s Mubarak Sultan Faraj and Japan’s Dai Tamesue, the bronze medalist at the world championships in Edmonton last year.
Somaily who was third at the Zurich Golden League meeting with 48.11 seconds, said he was aiming for gold at the games.
"I worked very hard for this because I really wanted the gold medal to put myself on the world stage. I wanted to run a season’s best but it was just too late in the season. I was just looking to get gold. I wasn’t expecting a great time as well."
Tamesue, who had returned to form after injury, had to be content with another bronze. "I messed up. I was off my rhythm from the first hurdle but it has been a long season so I’m happy with a bronze medal considering it was such a strong field," he said.
Sri Lanka’s Jayasinghe made up for missing the 13th Asiad in Bangkok through injury by taking gold in the 100 meters in 11.15 seconds. She had to work hard, though, as she came from behind to equal the games record she had set earlier in the heats.
"I thought I could run faster than in the first round, but I got a really bad start," she said. "After the first 30 meters everyone else had gone and I really needed to do something."
"Now I’m going to win another gold in the 200 definitely. This gold is not only for me but the first gold medal at this Asian Games for my country."
The 26-year-old won the 100 and 200 meters sprint double on home turf at the Asian championships in Colombo in August and took bronze in the 100 at the World Cup in Madrid last month.
Uzbekistan’s Lyubov Perepelova took the silver with China’s Qin Wangping picking up the bronze.
Japan’s Koji Murofushi celebrated his 28th birthday with victory in the hammer with a Games record of 78.72 meters.
Murofushi, silver medalist at the world championships last year, won with his second throw although it was short of his season’s best of 83.33 in the Paris Grand Prix final last month and his Asian Games record of 83.47.
The victory lifted the Murofushi family’s gold tally to seven after his success in Bangkok in 1998 and his father Shigenobu’s five straight Asian Games’ hammer titles between 1970 and 1986.
India’s Bahadur Singh Sagoo won the men’s shot gold with his only successful attempt of 19.03 meters with his second throw. Asian champion Bilal Saad Mubarak of Qatar took silver and Indian Shakti Singh won bronze.
Grigoriy Yegorov of Kazakhstan took the men’s pole vault by virtue of fewer failed attempts as he vaulted 5.40 meters on his second try. Japan’s Satoru Yasuda cleared that height on his third vault. Japan’s Fumiaki Kobayashi was third.
India won the women’s 800 meters as K M Beenamol took gold in two minutes 04.17 seconds ahead of compatriot Madhuri A Singh with Uzbekistan’s Zamira Amirova securing the bronze.
China struck gold when Sun Yingjie won the women’s 10,000 meters in a Games record of 30 minutes 28.26 seconds ahead of Japan’s Kayoko Fukushi and fellow Chinese Xing Huina.
China’s Shen Shengfei also won gold for China by retaining her women’s heptathlon title with 5,911 points as India’s Soma Biswas took silver and compatriot J J Shobha won bronze.
Defending champion Natalya Torshina of Kazakhstan won the 400 meters hurdles in 56.13 seconds ahead of China’s Song Yinglan (56.43) and Japan’s Makiko Yoshida (56.68).
Shen Shengfei of China retained her women’s heptathlon title with 5,911 points as India’s Soma Biswas (5,899) took silver and compatriot J J Shobha (5,870) won bronze. Kazakhstan’s Svetlana Kazanina, the silver medalist in Bangkok, was fourth.
Meanwhile, South Korea’s gold-medal favorite baseball team stayed unbeaten with a 7-2 win over China to set up a final showdown today against Taiwan, who beat Japan 6-5 in 10 innings. The medals table has firmed up with China holding an insurmountable lead at 106 golds, followed by South Korea with 52 and Japan with 35. Kazakhstan are in fourth with 13 golds.
In soccer, a first-half penalty from captain Lee Dong-gook gave hosts South Korea a 1-0 win over Bahrain to set up a semifinal against defending champions Iran. The Iranians beat Kuwait 1-0 thanks to a superb free kick from midfielder Eman Mobali, despite playing without top striker Ali Daei, who returned home earlier in the day after his father died late on Monday.
Striker Satoshi Nakayama snatched a 61st minute winner as Japan beat China 1-0 to secure a place in the last four for the first time since 1970. They next play Thailand, who ran out 1-0 winners over North Korea in their quarterfinal.
Qatar, whose capital Doha will host the next Asian Games in 2006, finally entered the gold medal table with titles in the men’s individual and team skeet shooting.
Hosts South Korea tightened their grip on second place in the medals table with golds in wrestling, cycling, equestrian dressage and table tennis. In the women’s doubles, South Korea’s Lee Eun-sil and Seok Eun-mi came from two sets down to beat the Chinese duo Zhang Yining and Li Nan for the hosts’ second table tennis gold following their win in mixed doubles.
The table tennis success of others has come at the expense of China, who have slipped since they swept six golds in the 1998 Games and all the golds in the 1996 and 2000 Olympics.
But Taiwan’s Yuan Shu-chi surprised South Korea’s Yun Mi-jin, double gold medalist in the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, to win the women’s individual archery gold medal. The South Koreans had targeted a sweep of al golds on offer in Busan.
Tang Gonghong joined the parade of world-record-setting Chinese weightlifters — twice surpassing the mark in the women’s over 75 kg clean and jerk en route to a gold medal.
The 23-year-old from Shandong made it three world records in three days for China’s women, as she lifted 165.5kg in her second attempt in the jerk, then hoisted 167.5 kg in her third try. On Monday, teammate Sun Ruiping set world records in the 75 kg class in snatch, clean and jerk and total — duplicating the triple-record feat achieved by Liu Chunhong on the previous day.
