After five days of weightlifting competition, the South Koreans have decided that enough was enough.
They put an end to China's winning streak last night, as Sa Jaeh-youk clinched gold in the men's 77kg category.
Before his win, Chinese weightlifters have won every category in which they participated in.
But Li Hongli could not maintain the streak, winning only the silver medal.
Sa Jaeh-youk of South Korea competes in the men's 77kg weightlifting event yesterday. He won gold. [Agencies] |
Said a jubilant Sa: "My win was down to a good strategy. I tried to keep the gap small between me and the leaders in the snatch, and then make my move in the clean and jerk."
Indeed, it had looked like Li was going to extend China's haul of six golds when he made his first two snatch attempts of the evening, lifting 163kg and 168kg.
However, he failed in his third attempt at 170kg, as he tried to secure a 5kg advantage against second-placed Gevorg Davtyan from Armenia.
Meanwhile, Sa stayed 5kg behind Li, with a lift of 163kg.
In the clean and jerk session, Li did not succeed in lifting 198kg until his third attempt, ruining his chance of extending his lead.
A tearful Li said afterwards: "The biggest disappointment was that I failed to extend my lead in the last attempt in the snatch. In the clean and jerk, I tried my best but I ran out of steam."
Davtyan could also only lift 195kg in his clean & jerk session for a total of 360kg.
This allowed Sa to overtake both Li and Davtyan, as the South Korean took the title with a successful second attempt at 203kg.
Although Sa and Li had the same total lift, Sa won because his weight is lower than Li's.
The 6,000-strong spectators at the BUAA Gymnasium, who were used to seeing Chinese weightlifters win, applauded Sa's victory.
Earlier yesterday, Liu Chunhong won the women's 69kg gold, smashing three world records after a tough battle with Russia's Oxana Slivenko, the world champion and world-record holder.
The 23-year-old Shandong native set a world record in the snatch with 125kg, then broke that record with her next lift, snatching 128kg.
Her 158kg lift in the clean and jerk and her combined total of 286kg were also world records, 10kg over the record set by Slivenko in the last year's World Champioships in Thailand.
The cartoon-loving Liu first trained as a judoka, but switched to weightlifting because, standing at 1.6m tall, she thought she was too short for judo.
Her gold, China's sixth of the Games, broke the nation's previous record of five golds in Athens.