Bodybuilders help S Korea catch Japan in medals race

Cho Wang-bung and Han Dong-ki showed off their muscles and collected Asian Games gold medals on Saturday, helping South Korea overtake Japan for second place behind runaway leader China.

Japan, counting on swimming to stay in contention, was shut out in five races in the pool. China won four -- clinching overall superiority in swimming here -- and South Korea and Uzbekistan shared gold in the other.

Cho and Han, in the 60 and 70-kilogram divisions, were the first winners in bodybuilding, making its Games debut. Vietnam's Duc Ly and Bahrain's Tariq Alfarsani won later at 80 and 90 kilograms, giving Bahrain its first gold of the Games.

Indonesia also won its first gold here, beating Japan 2-1 in women's team tennis when Wynne Adiati Prakusya and Angelique Widjaja defeated Saori Obata and Miho Saeki 6-4, 6-0 in the deciding doubles.

Shooters gave host South Korea three golds and gymnasts added one, lifting its total to 29 - ahead of Japan's 26 but far behind China's 85.

Among its 14 golds for the day, China's biggest haul was six in gymnastics.

Japan gained one gold from gymnastics and one when cyclists Yuichiro Kamiyama, Harutomo Watanabe and Takashi Kaneko won the men's team sprint in 1 minute, 00.927 seconds. South Korea won silver in 1:01.846.

Meanwhile, Japan advanced to the gold medal game in softball by trouncing Taiwan 10-0 in a game shortened to six innings because of the 10-run margin.

Neither Japan nor South Korea expects to catch China in the overall medals race, but the contest for second is intense. In the 1998 games, the Koreans beat Japan with 65 golds to 52 behind China's 129.

China beat South Korea for the team gold medal in men's table tennis, after North Korea upset the Chinese for the women's team gold yesterday night. China has won 13 world championships in women's team play.

It added one gold each in billiards, cycling and shooting.

Two of China's six gymnastics golds for the day came when Li Xiaopeng and Huang Xu tied at 9.800 on the parallel bars. Li also won the vault, ahead of all-around gold medalist Yang Wei of China.

On the horizontal bar, a late change in the judges' scores lifted Teng Haibin into a gold-medal tie with Japan's Hiroyuki Tomita and Yang Tae-seok.

China's Kang Xin won on the balance beam and Zhang Nan shared victory in the floor exercises with Oksana Chusovitina, a 27-year-old mother from Uzbekistan. Chusovitina won silver on the balance beam.

The men's 50-metre freestyle swim, where South Korea's Kim Min-suk and Uzbekistan's Ravil Nachaev tied for the gold, was the only swimming race not won by China or Japan. The Chinese ended up with 20 golds from swimming, to 11 for Japan.

"I was born and raised in Busan, so I felt a lot of pressure to win here," said Kim, 23. "I finally took a gold before my family, my relatives, my city and my country."