Mainland lift weight of expectations
With one mighty heave, Yang Lian began the mainland's domination of the weightlifting competition at the Lai Chi Kok Park Sports Centre last night.
China are expected to dominate the five-day competition, and they began in fine fashion, claiming two gold medals from two attempts on the first day of competition.
Yang started proceedings by taking the night's first gold in the women's under-48kg class with a winning 202kg total, beating Chen Wei-ling of Taiwan, by 10kg.
Spectators who came to see five of China's Beijing Olympic champions were not disappointed as Long Qingquan, the 19-year-old who won gold last year, wowed the crowd to win the men's under-56kg competition.
Long, who hails from Hunan province, snatched 125kg before lifted 155kg in the clean and jerk for a total of 280kg to beat Taiwan's Yang Chun-yi by an impressive 40kg.
In taekwondo, Hong Kong's Poon Chun-ho was outclassed in the men's under-61kg final, losing to South Korea's Kim Yong-min 8-1. Poon defeated Guam's Gilbert Pascua 7-0 in his first match to progress straight into the final, but he had no answer to the South Korean's quickness and strength in the gold-medal match.
South Korea have dominated taekwondo and secured another five golds yesterday to add to the two they won on Sunday.
Yet Taiwan's Tseng Pei-hua denied South Korea a clean sweep when she defeated Lee Shung-hye 3-2 in the women's under-59kg final.
