Asian Games | Silver lining for young and old athletes

Hong Kong’s Jacqueline Wing Ying Siu celebrates after winning gold medal

There was a silver lining for seven-time Olympian Oksana Chusovitina at the Asian Games.

The 43-year-old Uzbekistan gymnast took silver in the vault, one-tenth of a point behind 16-year-old South Korean Yeo Seo-jeong.

Yeo, who was born 10 years after Chusovitina made her Olympic debut and won gold in the team event in ‘92 in Barcelona, won with 14.387 points.

Chusovitina, who won the vault at the 2002 Asian Games and took silver medals in the event at the 1994 and 2014 editions, is competing with the intention of qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 — at 45.

At the other end of the spectrum, 15-year-old Shardul Vihan became India’s youngest medalist in shooting at the Asian Games when he took silver in the double trap final behind Shin Hyun-woo of South Korea.

Japanese teenager Rikako Ikee has been a star in the pool, and picked up her fifth gold medal and seventh overall of the meet to give her country a slight lead over China for swimming superiority.

With six finals remaining in swimming, Japan leads the medals table with 17 golds, followed by China on 16.

The 18-year-old Ikee swam the butterfly leg of Japan’s winning 4×100-meter medley relay, and is tied for second for the most gold medals and overall medals won by a competitor at a single Asian Games.

Only North Korea shooter So Gin Man, who won seven golds and eight medals overall in 1982, has done better. Ikee still has one race to go in Jakarta.

So does Chinese backstroker Xu Jiayu, who won his fourth gold with victory in the 200.

In other finals on the penultimate night in the pool, Shinri Shioura beat his Japanese teammate Katsumi Nakamura to win 100 freestyle in 48.71, Satomi Suzuki won two golds in less than 90 minutes and Singapore’s Joseph Schooling picked up his second gold within 24 hours when he added the 50 butterfly title to his victory in the 100 fly.

China continued to dominate the podium across co-host cities Jakarta and Palembang and its medal tally hit 100 — including 51 gold — halfway through the fifth day of competition.

That included golds in six of the day’s first eight rowing finals.

The sequence of gold for China was broken by Uzbek pair Shakhboz Kholmurzaev and Shakhboz Abdujabborov, who took  gold in double sculls, and the Vietnam crew of Ta Thanh Huyen, Luong Thi Thao, Ho Thi Ly and Pham Thi Thao in the lightweight women’s quadruple sculls.

Four of the six wushu gold medals in the sanda discipline went to China as well, with Iran collecting the other two via Erfan Ahangarian in the 60-kilogram division and Mohsen Mohammadseifi winning the 70-kilogram class.

In the road race, Kazakhstan rider Alexey Lutsenko left it late before surging to the finish in a desperate four-way sprint to edge Fumiyuko Beppu for gold. AP