HANGZHOU, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) — China swept each gold and silver medals within the 20km race stroll on the Asian Games right here on Friday, with Zhang Jun and Wang Zhaozhao ending first and second respectively within the males’s occasion, and Yang Jiayu defending her title within the girls’s race adopted by Ma Zhenxia.
The victories from Zhang and Yang mark China’s fifth consecutive win within the males’s occasion and the sixth gold in a row within the girls’s race on the Asian Games.
Zhang, the second quickest males’s 20km race walker this season, broke away from Wang with 4km left to win his first-ever main title in 1:23:00.
Wang completed second in 1:24:08, adopted by newly-crowned Asian champion Yutaro Murayama of Japan in 1:24:41.
Zhang’s ending time was 13 seconds sooner than his consequence finally month’s World Championships in Budapest, the place Chinese race walkers didn’t safe any medals.
“I’ve learned a lot from Budapest and have trained hard in the past month,” mentioned Zhang. “Today I just stuck to my plan, saving my energy in the first 15km and accelerating in the final 5km,” he added.
The girls’s occasion noticed a showdown between world file holder Yang and Youth Olympic champion Ma.
The duo led the entire race and pushed themselves ahead with 5km to go. At the final refreshment station, one in all Yang’s footwear grew to become unfastened, forcing her to an sudden halt.
“For a moment I was thinking about just walking on like that, but then I realized I couldn’t speed up in the final phase with my shoe problem, so I stopped to fix it and then caught up with Ma,” Yang recalled after the race.
The pair had been neck and neck till the ultimate meters of the race. Ma overtook Yang with 10m to go, however the defending champion made a miraculous comeback simply earlier than the road, clocking 1:30:03 to grab the gold.
“To be honest I haven’t been in good form since Budapest. I was even unable to complete the training plan a week before the Asiad. Today’s weather is hot and humid, which also created more difficulties,” mentioned Yang, attributing her victory to her psychological power and her execution of the race.
Ma settled for silver, only one second behind Yang. The 25-year-old was the highest-ranked Chinese race walker on the World Championships in Budapest, ending seventh within the girls’s 20km occasion.
The bronze medal went to Japan’s Nanako Fujii, who completed in 1:33:49.