Japan took home both the men’s and women’s gold medals. Ai Ueda won the women’s crown while Ryosuke Yamamoto took the men’s title in a stunning upset over Kazakh Daniil Sapunov. Both Ueda and Yamamoto earn automatic spots on the Japanese Olympic team as the event was a pre-determined Olympic qualifier by the Japanese Triathlon Union. Winning continental championships guarantees the country at least one spot on the Beijing start line.
Ai Ueda led a Japanese sweep in the women’s field of the 2008 Ueda crossed the line with a time of 2 hours 3 minutes and 18 seconds to claim her second elite Asian title and guarantees Japan at least one Olympic spot in Beijing.
“Being down by a minute was a big difference for me but I believed in my hard training and never gave up," said Ueda after the race.
It was a decisive win for Ueda who was more than a minute a head of Kiyomi Niwata who took silver. Juri Ide completed the podium sweep for Japan taking bronze, just nine seconds ahead of China’a Zhang Yi.
Ide, who wore the number one start number, emerged from the water first. After the swim, the first pack comprised of ten athletes that included Chinese Xing Lin, Yi, Teng Chunchun, Liu Yun, and Japanese Niwata, Akane Furutani, Keiko Tanaka, Ide along with Kimbeley Yap of Malaysia and Lee Hyun-Ju of Korea.
The Chinese team tried to escape on the bike but the Japanese women refused to let them go. Nine of the athletes moved to run segment except for Yap who had been dropped.
After transition, Ide lead the field, however, Niwata caught up and overtook Ide on the third lap. But it wasn’t long before Niwata was overtaken by compatriot Ueda who was behind by more than a minute at the end of bike segment. Ueda posted the fastest run of the day by more than a full two minutes to take the title.
2008 Guanzhou ASTC Triathlon Asian Championships
1.5km swim, 40km bike, 10km run
Elite Women – Final Results
1 Ueda, Ai (JPN) 02:03:18
2 Niwata, Kiyomi (JPN) 02:04:26
3 Ide, Juri (JPN) 02:05:20
Click here for full results.
No comments:
Post a Comment