By Martin Quin Pollard
HANGZHOU, China (Reuters) – Uzbekistan’s Bakhodir Jalolov won super-heavyweight boxing gold and China’s women’s basketballers beat their arch-rivals Japan in a thriller at the Asian Games on Thursday.
Tokyo Olympic champion and twice world champion Jalolov, 29, beat Kazakhstan’s Kamshybek Kunkabayev, 31, on points to take gold and continue his impressive record. The two-metre tall southpaw is also unbeaten in 13 professional fights.
There was bad news for Uzbekistan’s neighbours Turkmenistan after their top placed finisher at the Games so far, Kurash men’s +90kg silver medallist Tejen Tejenov, tested positive for banned substances and has been provisionally suspended, the International Testing Agency (ITA) said.
Tejenov is the first medallist and fifth athlete at the Hangzhou Games to have been reported by the ITA as failing a drugs test. The 30-year-old is a former judoka and wrestler who came seventh in Judo at the Jakarta 2018 Games.
Tejenov’s test sample was taken on Sept. 30 during the Kurash men’s +90kg finals, and returned an “adverse analytical finding for the non-specified prohibited substances dehydrochloromethyl-testosterone metabolite and methasterone metabolites”, the ITA said.
ARM IN ARM
In the men’s cycling road race Kazakhstan’s Yevgeniy Federov, 23, and Alexey Lutsenko, 31, crossed the finish line arm in arm, a whopping five minutes 42 seconds ahead of Jambaltsamts Sainbayar in third.
Federov took the gold. He said the pair decided he should be allowed to win because Lutsenko already had four Asian Games golds, including in Tuesday’s time trial. But his team mate shared a slightly different account.
“It’s me who decided who win the gold… I’m just kidding,” said Lutsenko after finishing the 210km course. “We tried to reach the finish line together.”
The two top ranked men’s squash players in Asia, Ng Eain Yow, 25, from Malaysia and Saurav Ghosal, 37, from India, went head to head for the second time in a week in the singles final.
In the men’s team semi-final on Sept. 29 Ghosal won (3-1) to help send India through to the final which they later won against Pakistan. This time Ng got his revenge winning a tight match 3-1 to take gold.
“I’m just soaking it in at the moment,” Ng said.
“At times, it just felt like there was no way we could win a point. Everyone was just picking everything up.”
The women’s final was also a fierce contest. But in the end Malaysia’s Subramaniam Sivasangari overcame Hong Kong’s Chan Sin Yuk 3-2 for her second gold of the Games after her Malaysian team won gold, also against Hong Kong last week.
“Actually don’t know what happened the last couple of points,” said Sivasangari, 24, who has spent most of the past year in recovery after being involved in a serious car accident last summer.
“When I’m down, I always think about the tragedy that happened to me a year ago. It’s very emotional. I’m just happy to be winning today.”
CRAZY CELEBRATIONS
In the first event of the day China’s He Jie gave local fans something to cheer about with victory in the men’s marathon.
In a gritty performance He dug deep in the last few kilometres to pull away from his North Korean rival, Han Il Ryong who got the silver, then celebrated wildly after crossing the line, screaming and almost ripping apart his vest.
“I am very excited now,” said the 24-year-old after his win in a time of 2:13.02.
In basketball China’s women made up somewhat for the disappointment of the men’s team losing their semi-final to the Philippines 77-76 a day earlier, by beating old rivals Japan 74-72 to take gold in a game that went down to the wire.
In inline freestyle skating speed slalom Taiwan got gold and bronze in both the women’s and the men’s event. Taiwan has won six of a possible nine golds in roller skating so far in Hangzhou.
“I’m still baffled by it,” said 15-year-old men’s winner Wang Yu-chun. “I didn’t think I could win gold. I haven’t recovered from it yet.”
(Reporting by Martin Quin Pollard; Editing by Toby Davis)
