DPRK weighs in with crop of top athletes

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea will send Olympic gold medalists and world champions to the 17th Asian Games to be held in Incheon, Republic of Korea, from Friday to Oct 4.

According to the organizing committee for the Games, the DPRK will send 150 athletes to compete in 14 of the 36 sports. Some of those are Olympic champions or winners of recent world championships.

Om Yun-chol, the 2012 Olympic weightlifting gold medalist and the 2013 world champion in the men's 56kg division, will take part in the Asiad. The 152-centimeter-tall dynamo holds the world record in the clean-and-jerk with 169kg, a record he set during the Asian Interclub Championships in Pyongyang last September.

The DPRK has another world record holder in weightlifting with Kim Un-guk, the 2012 Olympic gold medalist in the men's 62kg class. His winning total of 327kg has stood as the world record for more than two years.

Rim Jong-sim, another Olympic weightlifting champion in the women's 69kg, will also be at Incheon.

Ri Se-gwang is due to duel the ROK's Yang Hak-seon for the gold medal in the men's vault in artistic gymnastics. Yang won the gold at the 2010 Asian Games, two years before claiming his first Olympic title, while Ri was the 2006 Asiad gold medalist.

Xinhua

(China Daily 09/17/2014 page11)