Japanese swimmer sinks world mark

Japanese swimmer Kosuke Kitajima broke the world record in the men's 200-metre breaststroke, taking one of the few gold medals not won by China at the Asian Games on Wednesday.

In rowing, where no challenger came closer than four seconds, China swept all six of the day's races. Then its shooters took seven of eight possible golds and set world records in men's and women's team 10-metre air rifle competition.

Those 13 early golds plus Zhou Yan's triumph in women's 58-kilogram division weightlifting gave China a total of 29 for the four-day-old Games, well ahead of Japan's 12 and South Korea's 10.

Even before they had a chance to compete, three Malaysian sepak takraw players were ordered home for testing positive for morphine, the nation's delegation chief, Khalid Yunus, said today.

The action was based on tests administered earlier in Kuala Lumpur. There have been no positive doping tests reported so far at the Games.

Kitajima, back from an elbow injury that kept him out of the 200 in last month's Pan Pacific Championships, set a fast early pace and finished in 2 minutes, 09.97 seconds.

That beat the oldest record in men's swimming, the 2:10.16 set by American Mike Barrowman at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. It put Kitajima 3.63 seconds ahead of teammate Daisuke Kimura, the silver medallist.

Kitajima, bronze medallist at 200 metres in last year's World championships, won the 100-metre breaststroke here Monday.

"I've been working toward this for a long time and I don't feel as though I've even reached my limit," Kitajima said. "I think I can swim even faster."

Japan gained another gold from its world champion synchronised swimming pair, Miya Tachibana and Miho Takeda. Tachibana had won the solo gold yesterday.

South Korea won three of the day's four judo golds, ending Japan's run of four consecutive men's victories.

Another gold came from Kim Yong-mi's photo finish victory over Indonesia's Uyun Muzizah in the women's 96.8-kilometre cycling road race.

North Korea had three golds. It won the only shooting event not won by China today - in women's team trap shooting - and took a judo gold too.

In rowing, Japan's Hitoshi Hase fared best against the Chinese, finishing four seconds behind Zhu Zhifu in the men's lightweight single sculls. Zhu led by only half a second at the halfway point but pulled away over the last 500 metres of the 2,000-metre race.

It was the 51st victory in 53 Asian Games rowing races for China, which won all 11 rowing golds in the 1998 Games.

Cui Yonghui won the men's singles sculls and China's men also won the fours with coxswain both decided by 12 seconds.

In women's races, China's Fu Fengjun won by 18 seconds in the lightweight single sculls, the fours without coxswain won by 21 seconds and Zhang Xiuyun had a 23-second margin in the single sculls.

Three Chinese men shooters scored a total of 1,788 in the men's team air rifle event, beating the old world mark of 1,785 set by Russia in July. Li Jie won the individual gold with an Asian record 700.8.