Chinese athletes won 14 of the 31 gold medals awarded at the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou, east China’s Zhejiang Province, on Tuesday. One of them stood out as being truly special as it’s the first Esports gold since the sport officially became a medal event in the Asian Games.
China beat Malaysia 2-0 in the Arena of Valor Asian Games Version final at the China Hangzhou Esports Centre FOP Area to claim that special title. Tens of millions of Esports fans witnessed this lopsided victory on China Media Group’s (CMG’s) sports news and broadcasting channel, CCTV-5. This year’s Asian Games marked the first appearance of Esports on CMG in 19 years.
Chinese athletes were dominant in other sports as well on Tuesday. They swept Japan 3-0 in the table tennis women’s team final, pocketing the event’s gold for the fifth straight time. Though the general score was not close, Sun Yingsha, Chen Meng and Wang Manyu all overcame difficulties to win their sets.
Five hours later, China added the table tennis men’s team gold to their honor list by sweeping South Korea 3-0. Wang Chuqin, Fan Zhendong and Ma Long defeated Lim Jong-hoon, An Jae-hyun and Park Gang-hyeon respectively to win the event for the eighth consecutive time.
Huang Yuting and Sheng Lihao continued to reap titles for China in the shooting range. They paired to beat Javokhir Sokhibov and Mukhtasar Tokhirova of Uzbekistan 16-2 in the 10-meter air rifle mixed team final to add another gold for the hosts.
China edged Japan 22-21 in the rugby sevens women’s final on Tuesday. Having led 22-0 in the first half, China had to face Japan’s fierce counterstrike in the second half while missing a player. In the end, they managed to retain the victory by one point.
China’s Hong Kong beat South Korea 14-7 to win the rugby sevens women’s gold.
China broke the Asian record of the cycling track women’s team sprint by clocking 46.376 seconds in the event’s final on Tuesday. The previous record of 46.446 seconds was set by China as well in the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) Track Cycling World Championships in Glasgow, Scotland, in August.
More records were broken in the swimming pool. Li Bingjie smashed the Asian Games record of the women’s 400-meter freestyle event by finishing the race in 4:01.96. Siobhan Bernadette Haughey of China’s Hong Kong set the new Asian record of the women’s 100-meter freestyle event at 52.17 seconds.
Fei Liwei and Peng Xuwei secured the men’s 1,500-meter freestyle and the women’s 200-meter backstroke golds respectively for China.
At the end of the day, Xu Jiayu, Qin Haiyang, Wang Changhao and Pan Zhanle set the new Asian record of the men’s 4×100-meter medley relay event by clocking 3:27.01, winning the team’s 14th gold.
