China call the shots on first day

Doha, Dec 03: It was a story of Chinese domination on the first full day of sporting action at the 2006 Asian Games in Doha.
By the end of Saturday (2/12), the country had lifted a total of 23 medals - 16 of them gold.

Second place in the table, arch-rivals Japan had managed just three golds in a haul of 12 medals.

There was near total domination by Chinese swimmers at the Asian Games on Saturday (2/12).

Zhou Yafei defended her title in the 100-metres butterfly, leading a clean sweep of the top placings by China.

Her time - 58.39 seconds. Xu Yanwei followed in 58.73 and Tao Li, 58.96.

Ji won the women's 50-metres breaststroke in 31.52, followed by Japan's Asami Kitagawa in 32.27, and China's Wang Qun.

Wu Peng surged past Japan's Ryuichi Shibata on the final lap of the men's 200-metre butterfly to help China to five of the day's six gold medals.

Wu had lagged behind Shibata after 150 metres, but then accelerated dramatically, urged on by enthusiastic Chinese fans at the Hamad Aquatic Centre.

Wu - who won both the 200 butterfly and 200 backstroke at the last Asian Games in Busan, South Korea - won here in Doha in one minute 54.91 seconds.

Shibata eventually ended third in 1:56.44, behind Japan's Takeshi Matsuda, who recorded a mark of 1:55.49.

No Yao Ming, so all eyes were on Yi Jianlian and Wang Zhizhi when China met Kazakhstan on the basketball court.

19 year-old Yi has been given permission by his Chinese team to enter the NBA draft next year.

Wang was returning to the national team after a lacklustre career in the same league.

The pair helped China open their account in Group B with an 89-77 victory.

South Korea's Jang Sung-ho and Chinese heavyweight Tong Wen prevented Japan from sweeping the first day of judo.

Jang, the silver medallist in 2002, threw Satoshi Ishii to the mat 4 minutes and 49 seconds into their final bout for an "ippon" victory and the under-100-kilogram gold.

19 year-old Ishii is the youngest national champion Japan has had at this weight.

South Korea and Bahrain will be playing for an Asian Games quarterfinals spot in their last preliminary soccer match after both secured straight forward wins Saturday to share the Group B lead.

South Korea beat Vietnam 2-0 and Bahrain thrashed Bangladesh 5-1.

Lee Ho opened the scoring in the seventh minute and a Kim Jin-kyu header at the far post made it 2-0 for South Korea in injury time.

Kim's goal was South Korea's 150th in Asian Games competition.

In other matches, Uzbekistan had a 1-0 win over host Qatar - much to the disgust of the home fans - and the United Arab Emirates drew 1-1 with Jordan in Group A.

In Group C, Thailand and Kuwait maintained their unbeaten records, leaving top place to be decided with their Tuesday encounter. Thailand beat Kyrgyzstan 2-0 and Kuwait had a win by the same scoreline over the Palestinian team.

Defending champions Iran take on Hong Kong on Sunday in Group D.

Over in the Al-Dana Banquet Hall, the weightlifters held sway.

127kg in the clean and jerk proved one step too far for Junpim Kuntatean in the women's 53kg division.

The Thai had to settle for silver behind Li Ping of China.

Vietnam's Anh Tuan Hoang also had to settle for silver - this time in the men's 56kg class.

The winner here - unsurprisingly - another Chinese lifter, Li Zheng.

Bureau Report