China leads medals at 18th Asian athletics championships
GUANGZHOU, July 14 (Xinhua) -- The 18th Asian athletics championships came to a close on Saturday after five days of fierce competition with the host country topping the medals table.
China won 18 of the 44 titles on offer, followed by Japan winning 12. The final overall medals table reads China on 47 medals, followed by Japan with 22.
Iran, ranked ninth in all-medal tally at the last Asian championships, won a total of five medals and rocked to the third place.
Liu Xiang was the major attraction of this year's championships, which was his first outing in Chinese national colors after the unfortunate pull-out from the Beijing Olympics with an injury.
More than 30,000 spectators turned up eventually in time to catch a glimpse of the 2004 Olympic champion Liu crossing the hurdles in the rain.
Liu lived up to his top status and won easily his third Asian 110 meters hurdles championship, posting a time of 13.50 seconds, although the result was rather ordinary by his standards.
This year's event featured a close tussle between China and Japan. At the previous 17 editions of the championships, either China or Japan has topped the medal tally. Japan won the first four, while China placed second on debut at the 1979 championships. However at the last 13 editions, since 1983, China has led the madal tally. This year, Japan still tried to challenge China's dominance although China is on home soil.
Japan athletes did put on strong performances in track events, especially women's 100m, men's 400m hurdles and relay races, and 11out of 12 golds coming out of track events.
"But Chinese athletes do better at field events than at track events, and female athletes perform better than male counterparts," commented Feng Shuyong, vice director of the Chinese Athletics Administrative Center.
Yet Chinese athletes outperformed their Japanese counterparts surprisingly in some track events
Chinese Liu Xiaosheng surprised many people for claiming the men's 400 meters title. Liu, winner of the event at 2008 Asian indoor athletics championships, delighted the home crowd with a last-gasp dash to win the race in 46.55 seconds, beating Japanese Kanemaru Yuza, winner of the event at 2005 Asian championships by 0.5 seconds.
After the withdrawal of defending champion Samuels Francis of Qatar and the failure of Japan's Masashi Eriguchi to qualify for the semifinals, Japan's Naoki Tsukahara was considered to be the outright favorite in men's 100m event on day three. But China's Zhang Peimeng stole the limelight as he clocked 10.28 seconds to win, 0.04 seconds faster than Naoki.
Strong results on track events propelled Japan to close the gap with the host nation on medals table. On the last two days, Japan won nine more titles to shorten the gap with China. Yet after the unexpected losses in events which they are capable of winning like women's 800m, men's javelin and women's 4X400m relay, Japan failed to top the medal tally and stood second at 12 golds, eight more than last Asia championships.
All together 21 out of 38 participating countries and regions bagged medals in this year's Asian championships.
The 18th Asian Athletics Championships, the final major track and field meet in 2009, commenced in Guangzhou, China, on Tuesday November 10. A total of 582 athletes competed in the five-day event. The venue for the championships will be developed for the multi-sport Asian Games to be held in 12 months.
