OLY: Double gold Chinese triumph in Olympic athletics

AAP General News (Australia)
08-28-2004
OLY: Double gold Chinese triumph in Olympic athletics

By Robert Smith

ATHENS, Aug 27 AFP - China celebrated a stunning double gold athletic triumph at the
Athens Olympics tonight with Liu Xiang equalling a world record in the men's 110-metres
hurdles and Xing Huina winning the women's 10,000 metres.

Liu, 21, equalled Colin Jackson's 11-year record of 12.91 seconds in storming to the
men's 110-metres hurdles title as he became the first Chinese man to win an Olympic track
and field gold medal.

It was followed by Xing's triumph as the 20-year-old ran a personal best of 30 minutes
24.36 seconds to win.

It was a wonderful boost for the prestige of Chinese sport heading to the next Olympics
in Beijing in 2008.

There was a sensation in the basketball with Argentina dumping the glamour United States
team out of the Olympics in a 89-81 semi-final upset.

The US team becomes the first group of National Basketball Association players not
to claim Olympic gold and with three total Athens losses, the squad has dropped one more
game than all US teams combined in the previous 68 years.

Argentina ensured a first-ever Olympic medal and advanced to tomorrow's gold medal
game against the winner of a later semi-final between undefeated Lithuania and Italy.

Australia's 'nearly men' finally broke through for a hockey gold medal with a golden
goal in a 2-1 victory over the Netherlands in the final.

The Kookaburras had lost three previous Olympic finals after making it to the semi-finals
and beyond in eight of their last nine appearances since Tokyo in 1964.

World champions Germany took the bronze defeating Spain 4-3.

Russia's Tatyana Lebedeva captured the Olympic women's long jump title with a best
effort of 7.07m but American triple Olympic champion Marion Jones missed out on a medal
in fifth place.

There was worse to come as a botched handover involving her led to the US team crashing
out of the women's 4 x 100 metres relay final which was then won by Jamaica.

It's been a horrible year for Jones, who has been subjected to allegations of drugtaking
by her ex-husband CJ Hunter, while 100m world record-holder Tim Montgomery, her boyfriend
and father of her one-year-old son, has been implicated in the scandal.

There was more heartache for Britain's Paula Radcliffe, who again failed to finish
in the women's 10,000m after flopping in the marathon.

German kayaker Birgit Fischer and Polish walking legend Robert Korzeniowski Friday
created their own pieces of Olympic folklore with victories earlier Friday.

Fischer, a 42-year-old mother of two, captured her eighth Olympic gold medal in the
women's K4 500 metres and will equal the record as the most successful female athlete
in Olympic history should she capture Saturday's K2 500m final.

She can join nine-times gold medallist Russian gymnast Larissa Latynina.

Korzeniowski walked into the history books with his fourth Olympic title in the 50-kilometre
walk in his final race at this level.

Drugs again blighted the Athens Games with Russian 400m runner Anton Galkin Friday
kicked out of the Olympics for returning a positive drugs test and reports that Hungarian
Olympic silver-medallist weightlifter Ferenc Gyurkovics had failed a doping test.

The International Olympic Committee announced Galkin tested positive for an anabolic
steroid after finishing fourth in his semi-final on August 21 and he became the 21st competitor
to be sanctioned for drug-related offences here.

Fischer led a sweep of three German gold medals in canoeing and kayaking to take the
country's gold tally to 12 and sixth place on the medal tally.

Norway won a gold medal with Gunn-Rita Dahle's all-the-way win in the women's mountain
bike and there were two taekwondo gold medals decided, Hadi Saei Bonehkohal of Iran in
the men's 68kg and South Korean Jang Ji-Won in the women's under-57kg featherweight.

Zsuzsanna Voros of Hungary claimed the gold in the women's modern pentathlon.

Two-time defending champions United States withstood their closest call of a 24-game
Olympic win streak before advancing to the women's basketball final with a 66-62 win over
Russia and will face the 2000 runners-up Australia, who downed 2000 bronze medallists
Brazil 88-75 with Olympic scoring leader Lauren Jackson sinking 26 points.

Amir Khan, the 17-year-old British boxing sensation, outpointed Kazakhstan's Serik
Yeleuov to set up an Olympic lightweight (60kg) final on Sunday with Cuban defending champion
Mario Kindelan.

Kindelan eased into the gold medal contest with a masterful beating of Russia's Murat
Krachev in his semi.

Khan is confident of matching Floyd Patterson's gold medal won at the 1952 Helsinki
Olympics when the American was a month younger than Khan.

Iraq missed out on their first medal since 1960 when their footballers lost 1-0 to
Italy in the third-place play-off in Salonika on Friday.

Argentina and Paraguay play off for the gold medal on Saturday.

AFP nh

KEYWORD: OLY DAYLEAD

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