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Liu's grand final lift snatches Games gold as China double up / Photo: © AFP
Liu's grand final lift snatches Games gold as China double up
China's Liu Huanhua produced an incredible lifetime best lift of 233kg to snatch Asian Games weightlifting gold from Olympic and world champion Akbar Djuraev in the men's 109kg class on Friday.
China then won a fifth weightlifting gold of their home Games in Hangzhou when Liang Xiaomei easily triumphed in the women's 87kg division.
Liu's winning total of 418kg was the equivalent of hauling a grand piano over his head and relegated a disconsolate Djuraev into silver.
The Uzbek had celebrated moments earlier believing his final lift for a 417kg total was plenty, only to look on in horror as Liu produced the lift of his life.
"This is at home. I could not fail," Liu said.
"The crowd was so enthusiastic that they lifted me up and I had this driving force inside me, and that's why I was able to put in this performance and win the gold medal."
Another Uzbek, Ruslan Nurudinov, took bronze on 391kg after an error-strewn competition in a weight division that will not feature at the Olympics next year.
"This is a failure for us, but the medals still mean something," said Djuraev, the 2019 world champion and Tokyo Olympic gold medallist at 109kg.
Four of the nine athletes crashed out with three no-lifts, including one of the pre-event medal favourites, Reza Dehdar of Iran.
Liu won the world championship at the lighter 102kg division in Riyadh last month, a category that will feature in Paris, but he moved up to 109kg for the first time in search of Asian Games medals and struck gold.
The Chinese lifter was not able to bulk up for the heavier division in such a short time, weighing in at just 99.5kg, yet still lifted 14kg more than the 404kg total he achieved to win his 102kg world title.
Liang's total of 275kg in the women's 87kg class was streets ahead of South Korean pair Yun Ha-je, who took silver on 252kg, and Jung A-ram on 245kg.
North Korea will finish top of the weightlifting medals table with six golds, one ahead of China, as neither country has any competitors entered in Saturday's two final events -- the men's (+109kg) and women's (+87kg) superheavyweights.
The world record in that men's category stands at a staggering 492kg -- the weight of a Fiat 500 car.
P. Rasmussen--BTZ
