Day-5 Roundup: Chinese swimmer refreshes Asian mark at National Games

Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-01 23:02:06|Editor: yan
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TIANJIN, Sept. 1 (Xinhua) -- As the record-breaking shooting tournament concluded here Friday at the National Games, the spotlight shifted to the swimming pool, with teenage sensation Li Bingjie of Hebei giving the full-house audience a big surprise as she timed in an Asian record to win the women's 400m freestyle.

The 15-year-old clocked four minutes and 1.75 seconds to dominate the 400m event, improving the Asian mark by 0.60 seconds and beating her national teammate and the PLA delegation's Zhang Yuhan to the second place with a margin of nearly three seconds.

The previous Asian mark of 4:02.35 was set by Chen Qian in the 2009 National Games.

"It's an unexpected result as I just returned from the worlds one month ago," said Li, who also renewed the Asian record of women's 800m freestyle to 8:15.46 in the World Championships in July in Budapest, Hungary.

"My coach helped me a lot to improve my physical training, and I just hope to compete in more competition for experience," added the teenager, who brought home two silvers (800m freestyle and 4X200m freestyle relay) and one bronze of 400m freestyle from the worlds.

The sport's biggest name in China, Sun Yang, who just celebrated his 100th gold medal of career after storming into the 400m freestyle in the second fastest time of the year on Thursday, finished atop in the men's 200m freestyle semifinals with a comfortable 1:47.84.

He later joined in a mixed quartet featuring Wang Shun, Xu Jiayu of Zhejiang and Du Jingqian from Hong Kong and scored the fastest split of 48.00 among all the swimmers in the 4X100m freestyle relay. However, his team was 0.39 shy of the winning combination of Henan, Liaoning and Guangdong swimmers, finishing second in 3:15.09.

Sun's satisfied with his result in the relay, saying it proved his capability of swimming faster in his favorite 200, 400 and 800.

"It also boosts my confidence in the short distance. The more important thing is that I can do more for our Chinese relay team," said the 25-year-old.

Elsewhere in the Day 5 competitions of the quadrennial sports gala, Beijing Olympic champion Pang Wei reaped his first National Games gold medal from the newly-introduced 10m air pistol mixed team event.

Pang, the men's 10m air pistol titlist at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, partnered with Hebei teammate Zhao Xu to prevail over Team Henan's Zhou Ying and He Zhengyang in a tight final 7-6.

"Glad to win my first National Games gold in a new event. There is more chance of mistakes in mixed team, but that's quite charming for shooters and also attractive for the audiences," said Pang, filled with excitement.

The 31-year-old was taking part in his fourth National Games with none of the previous three participations bringing him a gold.

In the other shooting final on Friday, Gao Tingjie and Jiang Ting of Team Jiangsu beat Team Hebei's Yang Haoran and Du Bei 7-4 to be crowned the 10m air rifle mixed team.

The 10m air pistol mixed team, 10m air rifle mixed team and trap mixed team events have been ratified to join Tokyo 2020 Olympics by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on June 9, 2017 under the recommendation of the sport's world governing body ISSF.

On the Games's volleyball court, Chinese international Jiang Chuan scored team high 28 points to lift the men's defending champions Beijing over Henan 25-17, 25-21, 22-25, 25-18.

"Liu Libin and I were just from the national team. We've both had some good experience from the recent international tournaments," said Jiang, who was the top scorer of the Chinese team that secured a berth of next year's World Championships through a qualifying tournament in Iran.

Eight teams are playing in two round robin groups in the men's volleyball tournament with the placings to decide the match-ups for the knockout stage.

Shanghai won two team events on Friday when their men's sabre team edged Liaoning 45-42 in the final and their top paddlers pocketed the men's team gold.

The table tennis women's team title went to Sichuan, while Fujian overwhelmed defending champion Tianjin 39-27 to be crowned at the women's team foil.

The 13th National Games, slated on Aug. 27-Sept. 8, kick off the athletics competitions on Saturday with three track and field finals, while 15 golds will be on offer in seven other sports, including swimming, gymnastics and weightlifting.

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