Canoeing adds to China's medal tally in Busan

Phil Brown, Associated Press, Busan, South Korea

China added canoeing to its ways of winning Asian Games gold medals on water. Sri Lankan runner Susantika Jayasinghe added a missed chance for a sprint sweep to her list of troubles.

Jayasinghe, often Asia's fastest but never an Asian Games gold medalist before she won the 100 Tuesday, dropped out of the 200 Thursday with a hamstring injury.

While she missed a chance for the 100-200 sprint double she wanted, India accomplished a triple in track and field.

Saraswati Saha - who said she had come to beat Jayasinghe - won the 200 by 0.06 seconds as China's Ni Xiaoli nearly caught her at the tape.

Sunita Rani won the women's 1,500 and Neelam Jaswant Singh won the women's discus throw.

Japan's Shingo Suetsugu won the men's 200, comfortably ahead of Kazakhstan's Gennadiy Chernovol.

Feng Yun led a 1-2 Chinese finish in the women's 100-meter hurdles, and Qi Haifeng won the two-day, 10-event decathlon.

While China was overshadowed in the athletics stadium, its canoe racers collected four gold medals and its divers extended their sweep to five events, helping to lift the nation's total to 127.

World champion Guo Jingjing won on the 3-meter springboard, her second gold of these games.

South Korea improved its gold total to 67. Lee Jin-taek won the men's high jump, and the Koreans also gained golds from their men's and women's archery teams, two taekwondo athletes, equestrian rider Choi Jun-sang in dressage and a downhill cyclist.

Japan trailed with 39, including Suetsugu's and one from women's downhill cycling.

The Japanese, however, reached soccer's gold medal game with a 3-0 victory over Thailand. They will meet Iran, which beat host South Korea 5-3 in penalty kicks after the two teams went scoreless through full time and 30 minutes of extra time.

Even without Jayasinghe, Sri Lanka took gold Thursday. Damayanthi Kobala Vithanage won the women's 400, beating 800 winner K.M. Beenamol by nearly a second.

In downhill mountain biking, Japan's Mio Suemasa finished more than 24 seconds ahead of compatriot Mami Masuda in the women's race, and South Korea's Chung Hyung-rae edged Japan's Takashi Tsukamoto by less than half a second in the men's.

Iran's Hossein Reza Zadeh won in the heaviest men's class - over 105 kilograms - as weightlifting concluded. China won in nine of the 15 men's and women's weight classes; world records were broken or tied in eight of the 15.

South Korean Park Hee-chul took the gold in the tae kwon do men's finweight division and Kim Yeon-ji in women's lightweight.

Iran's Hadi Saei Bonehkohal won in men's lightweight and Taiwan's Chen Shih-hsin in women's finweight.

In five canoeing races, Kazakhstan's Dmitry Torlopov and Dmitry Kaltenberger prevented a Chinese sweep by winning in the men's double kayaks. Kazakstan also was leading in the four-man kayak race, but China made up nearly a second over the last 250 meters and won by 0.054 second.

Earlier in the games, China won 12 of 13 rowing races and six of 15 in sailing.