China collects golds with world records at Asian Weightlifting Championships

NINGBO, China, April 22 (Xinhua) -- Chinese weightlifters took two gold medals on offer by breaking three world records at the Asian Weightlifting Championships here on Monday.

In the men's 73kg category, Olympic champion Shi Zhiyong met no challenge in the snatch as he hoisted 168kg to rewrite his own world record which he set up at the World Championships last year.

After failure in the first two attempts, the 25-year-old still kept the momentum to lift 194kg in the thrid jerk for a winning total of 362kg, two kilos more than his own world record.

Shi has been dominating the 73kg division after the International Weightlifting Federation reshuffled all the bodyweight categories last year, as he holds the three world records of the category since the 2018 World Championships.

"I was confident to break the world records before I came here, because I became stronger after my training in winter," said Shi.

"Maybe I was too confident, and I was off guard in the jerk. What a thrill after I failed two attempts!" the Rio Olympic gold medalist added.

"Jerk is my advantage, but I've never expected that something was going wrong in this part. It gave me a lesson to be more cautious in the future."

Shi's compatriot Yuan Chengfei, the silver medalist at the World Cup in Fuzhou, lifted a total of 349kg to claim the silver while the bronze went to O Kang Chol of DPR Korea at 338kg.

In the women's 55kg category, Chinese Liao Qiuyun, the national champion in 53kg in 2017, jerked up 128kg to break the world record by one kilo, which was set up by Sukanya Srisurat of Thailand last year.

The 23-year-old Liao claimed the gold medal with a total of 224kg. Hidilyn Diaz of the Philippines grabbed the silver at 209kg and Muattar Nabieva of Uzbekistan settled for the bronze at 204kg.