South Koreans rule bowling masters in Guangzhou
South Korea closed out the 2010 Asian Games bowling competition with two more gold medals on Wednesday.
Choi Bok-eum won the men's masters events while Hwang Sun-ok ruled the women's masters to capture her fourth gold medal of the Guangzhou meet.
Top seed Choi, who earlier won golds in the men's trios and team of five events, beat third seed Mohammed Al Rageebah of Kuwait 462-327 in the two-game final.
The South Korean advanced to the stepladder final by posting the best score after the first and second block of the masters. He rolled a perfect 300 in the second block en route to a 16-game output of
3823.
Al Rageebah upset second seed Du Jianchao of China 215-208 in the stepladder phase to reach the finals. The Kuwaiti scored 3673 in the qualifying stages while the Chinese submitted a 3730. Du's bronze
medal was the first for the Chinese men's team in the competition.
"On short oil, I thought I can handle it and the head coach also said that if I do my own swing, it will be okay. He told me that the short oil could be tricky and advised me to change my ball to a spare
ball and it worked," said Choi in an interview with Yonhap News.
"Before I came to Guangzhou, I set my own target of achieving two gold medals and I'm really very happy to have achieved it."
In the women's masters, top-ranked Hwang sustained her momentum as she beat third seed Singaporean Cherie Tan 482-472 in a thrilling final. The South Korean took the first game 278-258 to set the early
pace. Tan bounced back to win the second game 214-204 but it was not enough to overcome Hwang's lead.
"When I came here I aim to win two or more gold but after winning four, I'm overwhelmed. Even though this is not an Olympic sport, we could still join the national training centre and that is a big help,"
said Hwang, who became the first South Korean athlete to win four golds in the Guangzhou Asian Games.
The bronze went to another South Korean Choi Jin-a, who lost to Tan 191-266 in the first stepladder match.
South Korea won a total of eight gold medals to easily emerge as the overall champions in the bowling competition. They also brought home five silvers and two bronze medals.
Malaysia ranked second with a 2-1-1 harvest. Singapore had a 1-3-1 production while the Philippines posted a 1-0-1 output.
Other countries that won medals were Kuwait (0-2-0), Indonesia (0-1-0), Japan (0-1-0), China (0-0-4), Hong Kong (0-0-1) and Qatar (0-0-1).
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