China Starts Strong at Asiad Canoeing

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, October 10, 2002

China Starts Strong at Asiad Canoeing

China flexed its muscle in the canoeing by taking four of the five gold medals on offer here at the Asian Games on Thursday.

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China Starts Strong at Asiad Canoeing

China flexed its muscle in the canoeing by taking four of the five gold medals on offer here at the Asian Games on Thursday.

China completed its gold slaughter at the men's four kayak 1,000m final, clocking a winning time of 03:04.576.

Kazakhstan finished second with a time of 03:04.630, followed by Japan on 03:08.236.

Earlier China has collected golds in the men's double Canadian canoe 1,000m event, men's single kayak 1,000m and men's single Canadian canoe 1,000m events.

But Kazakhstan spoiled the Chinese party as they claimed the title in the men's double kayak 1,000m competition. Chinese pair Liu Mingguang and Yin Yijun ended up third in this discipline.

"The results should be like that," said Liu Mingguang after the competition, "The Kazakhstan players' performance today were not good at all, but of course, ours were even worse.

"We had some problems in the competition tactics, or we executed the tactics in a wrong way. We will have a sum-up right after the competition," said Liu.

But this nearly clean sweep of gold medals has exceeded the expectations of the Chinese team, which had predicted a maximum of three gold medals for the sport.

"We have little information of the other teams, so we have thought three golds would be at best for us," Yuan Shoulong, a Chinese team official said.

Liu Aijie, Chinese canoeing team manager, said that despite the four titles, there was still a long way to go for China in canoeing sports.

"The winning results today were much less than the world bests this year, the gold medalists here can't even win a medal in the World Championships or Olympics," said Liu.

"If we want to claim a gold in the Olympic Games, we have to improve a lot," added Liu.

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