China Shines, Result Slackluster in Men's Weightlifting Worlds

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, November 27, 2002

China Shines, Result Slackluster in Men's Weightlifting Worlds

China stunned the world by topping the gold tally with eight at the just-concluded 72nd men's weightlifting worlds, in which the results were quite lackluster as only one world record was broken.

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China stunned the world by topping the gold tally with eight at the just-concluded 72nd men's weightlifting worlds, in which the results were quite lackluster as only one world record was broken.

It was the best cake in history made by China, who sent eight lifters to attend five of the eight-category competitions and ranked first in the team classification with 484 points.

Chinese team head coach Wu Shude said:"It was the first time for most of the Chinese athletes to participate in this championships. They did quite well in light-weight categories. Andthe middle- and heavy-weight disciplines were still the arena for foreign strongmen."

China's young talent Wu Meijin, who was the champion of the 56kg discipline at the Busan Asiad, swept the snatch, jerk and total golds at the championships on the first day of the competitions, beating Chinese Taipei's favorites Yang Chin-Yi and Wang Shin-Yuan to second and third places.

Chen Chufu and Zhang Guozheng made another lopsided triumph forChina by sweeping all the three golds and slivers in the 69kg category.

The snatch golds taken by Le Maosheng and Li Hongli in the 62kgand 77kg categories finally fixed China's top position on the goldtally.

"Chinese athletes are strong in skills and techniques which putthem in advantages in the snatch competitions. European and west Asian lifters are superior in muscle powers, which made them shinein jerk competitions, the heavy-weight categories in particular," Wu said.

Iranian ace lifter Hossein Reza Zadeh rewrote the over 105kg jerk world record of 262.5kgs as 263kgs to become not only the snatch, jerk and total world records holder of the discipline but also the only strongman breaking a world record in the championships.

Bulgaria, a traditional powerhouse of weightlifting, ranked second on both the medal tally and the team classification with four golds, eight silvers, three bronzes and a total of 482 points.

Depending on Zadeh's brilliant performance, Iran occupied the third place on the medal tally with three golds and three bronzes.But it only ranked seventh in the team classification.

Turkey, which snatched only two silvers, took the third place in the team classification with a total of 410 points.

Talking about the lack of world records broken in the championships, Wu said,"Most of the Chinese athletes attended the Busan Asiad, China's national championships and provincial competitions in the last two months. They inevitably felt tired and it is not easy for them to keep good form in such a long time."

"Injury is another trouble to some ace athletes, such as Halil Mutlu, the world records holder of the 56kg category." Wu added.

Mutlu, who won the category in the last championships in Turkey,did not come to Warsaw for a leg injury.

As the competition was so tense in many categories, it was verydifficult for the lifters to make choice of guaranteeing a gold orbreaking a record.

A total of 170 athletes from 47 countries and regions competed in the eight-day championships.

As all the urine samples for doping tests were sent abroad for analyzing, nobody has been defined as a cheater so far.

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