Dongguang, China – Salimi Behdad (Iran) came to the Asian Games hoping to break Hossein Rezazadeh’s world record in the snatch, but his chances evaporated when he missed his opener, 201 kg.

He repeated, made it easily, and then he took a conservative increase to 205 kg for another easy success.

Salimi’s fortunes did not improve in the clean and jerk: after hitting 235 kg on his first attempt, he missed the jerk with 241 kg on his second attempt and appeared to be blacking out.  Sitting in first place, he passed on his third attempt.

Trying to silver into gold, Jeon Sangguen (Korea) called for 251 kg on his third attempt in the clean and jerk, he missed the clean.

Today’s competition began with a bang for the hometown crowd as Yang Zhe (China) won the 105-kg class via 185/217 for a 402-kg total.  Second place went to Ivan Efremov (Uzbekistan) via a 400-kg total, and Sergey Istomin (Kazakhstan), whose missed lifts caused Kazakh coach Alexi Ni such fits that at one point he threw himself on the floor, was third with 396 kg.

Next up was the women’s +75-kg category and Jang Mi Ran (Korea) appeared to open the door for Meng Suping (China) when her opening snatch,130 kg, was turned down by a majority decision.  Meng Suping had a solid success with 130 kg on her first attempt and Jang Mi Ran followed suit with her second attempt.  Jang Mi Ran had 134 overhead on her second attempt, but then had to chase it in an effort to keep the bar aloft: She ran out of platform and the bouncing bar ran out of stage, and one end landed on the center referee’s table.  Meng Suping made 135 kg on her third attempt.

In the clean and jerk, Meng Suping couldn’t rack 175 on her opener; Jang Mi Ran demonstrated how to do it with her first attempt and Meng Suping responded by making 176 on her second attempt. 

Preliminaries aside, Jang Mi Ran nailed 181 kg on her second attempt, to move into the lead.  Meng Suping tried to respond by taking 182, but it was a repeat of her first attempt, only with more weight.  Gold medal in hand, Jang Mi Ran wanted to add a little more glitter to the evening and she called for 188 kg, in an effort to break her own world record.  After making a solid clean and punching the bar overhead, she lost it behind.

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