Asiad Faces
After claiming his second swimming gold medal at the Guangzhou Asian Games, the Republic of Korea's Park Tae-hwan is eyeing a hat-trick.
The Republic of Korea's (ROK) superstar Park Tae-hwan crushed China's Zhang Lin in an Olympic swimming rematch on Tuesday as Li Na led the host to the women's team tennis gold and Chinese Taipei clinched the men's title.
Maldives' Mohamed Sharim and Shaheed Zaki Hussain Zayan's first appearance in the Asian Games here lasted for just 12 minutes but they were satisfied with their own performance.
The Guangzhou Games are raising the bar of the quadrennial Asiad and helping Asian countries and regions fare better in qualifying for the 2012 Olympics in London, a senior official of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) said.
World and Olympic champion Park Tae-hwan of the Republic of Korea (ROK) will lead a world-class field into the pool on Tuesday when he takes on the Chinese duo of Zhang Lin and upcoming Sun Yang in the men's 400m freestyle.
Japan's breaststroke king, Kosuke Kitajima, was dethroned for a second time in the swimming pool on Monday night when he again failed to make podium.
Until recently, Thailand was always a peripheral player in an Asian badminton community long dominated by traditional powerhouses China, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Republic of Korea.
The Guangzhou Asian Games have made Sana Mir, the captain of the Pakistan women's cricket team, feel like a big-screen star.
The most anticipated individual showdown in the Asian Games pool - between the Republic of Korea's (ROK) Olympic champion, Park Tae-hwan, and China's world champion, Zhang Lin - ended with Park claiming the gold medal in Sunday's men's 200m freestyle.
Kenneth Fok, deputy-head of Hong Kong's delegation at the Asian Games, is perhaps better known as the boyfriend of China's "diving queen," Guo Jingjing.
Volunteers' dilemma