South Korea have showed their power and depth in speed skating after beating the favorite Chinese to win both the women's and men's 500 meters and making all their participants in top eight at the Harbin Winter Universiade on Thursday.
The peninsula country's No. 1 women skater Lee Sang Hwa held off a strong challenge from the hosts' Yu Jing to take the tournament's first gold medal in dispute with a record setting result.
Her only compatriot in the race, Lee Bo Ra, finished the seventh and Japan's Nao Kodaira was the fifth, while all other places in top seven were occupied by Chinese skaters.
Just an hour later, another short-course expert Lee Kang Seok won the second title for South Korea after narrowly beating Chinese star Yu Fengtong by 0.05 seconds.
The 24-year-old Yu, a former world junior record holder who ranked fifth in the 2006 Winter Olympic Games, led the provisional standings after making the first race in 34.98 seconds, just 0.02 less than Lee Kang Seok, but failed to hold on for victory in the second round, clocking 34.89 against the Korean's 34.82.
"I performed well but Lee was better," commented Yu. "He had obviously fully recovered from the recent injuries that cost him several world speed skating series and World Cup races."
Mo Tae Bum of South Korea won the bronze medal with respective results of 35.38 and 35.15. Her compatriots Mun Joon and Choi Jin Yong finished the fourth and eighth in the overall standings, while China's Zhang Zhongqi and Zhang Yaolin took the fifth and sixth positions.
Lee Sang Hwa's trophy in the women's 500m stamped the opening victory of the universiade as the teenage sensation twice smashed the universiade record, clocking 38.20 in the first race and 38.16 in the second.
"It's a sweet surprise," said Lee, who turns 20 years old next week. "To win the universiade's first gold is something beyond my expectation since I just wanted to race against the previous record."
"I'm so glad that I performed better than what I had imagined," she said.
The previous record was 38.64, which was set in 2007 in Turin, also by Lee, whose personal best is a world junior record time of 37.81 set at the World Single Distances Championships two years ago in Salt Lake City,
China's favorite Yu Jing, the reigning national title holder, settled for the second place after pairing with Lee in both the races and finishing repectively on 38.42 and 38.47.
Her compatriot Zhang Shuang was the third after taking the first race in a time of 38.95 and the second at 38.35, narrowly beating teammate Ren Hui, a double gold medalist in the 2005 universiade, with a sum time difference of 0.01 second.
It was widely blamed that the Chinese sensations had been under too much pressure. Yu said she could feel her nerve when racing against Lee on the same track, while Zhang said she's too anxious to make errors.
The pressure, however, could not be found on the much younger Lee Sang Hwa.
"I just performed my normal level," she said. "Of course I could feel the pressure when racing a match that produced the first gold, but I'd been sure that I could handle it while the Chinese might have been more pressed to race at home."
(Xinhua New Agency February 19, 2009)