Chinese sweep Asian Championships on home turf
China launched many of its Olympic and world champions at the Asian Championships held in Tai’an City, Shendong Province, and retained the bulk of honours at the event. In fact, in each of the seven women’s categories there was a Chinese winner. Chen Xiexia (48kg), Li Ping (53kg) and Qiu Hongmei (58kg) set up new world and world junior records.
In the men’s field, Vietnamese prodigy Hoang Anh Tuan confirmed his position as the champion, defeating two Chinese rivals. In the absence of a few stars (e.g. Ilin from Kazakhstan or Reza Zadeh from Iran), the categories from 62kg to 85kg were taken by Chinese competitors, among them names like Shi Zhiyong or Li Hongli. Asian Games winner Syrian Ahed Joughili won in 105kg by a large margin over Qatar’s former star Assad Saeed Said Saif. Even more surprising was the victory of an emerging Chinese superheavy, Sun Haibo, who beat Olympic medallist Jaber Salem with an impressive 431kg result he meant as an introduction.
The men’s only world record was born in the 62kg: 177kg clean and jerk by Yang Fan (CHN).
For world records, see: http://www.iwf.net/iwf/events/wr/record_cur.php
For results, see: http://www.a-w-f.net/taian.htm
