GUANGZHOU - A Chinese trio won over arch rival Japan by a narrow margin to win the track cycling men's team sprint at the Asian Games on Sunday.

Cheng Changsong, Zhang Lei and Zhang Miao finished with an impressive time of 44.429 seconds, 0.204 ahead of their Japanese counterparts. Iran, which posted a time of 44.815, placed third.

"We are very happy to win the gold medal we have been dreaming about. Japan are our strongest opponents and they did great today. We did have pressure. However, we did better," said Cheng Changsong.

But the result isn't the trio's best. Just several months ago, they notched the Asian record in 44.002 seconds at 2010 UCI track cycling world championships in Ballerup, Denmark.

Cheng said: "44 seconds is our next goal."

Japanese seemed happy with the silver, saying they had pulled off their best performance.

"We broke the Japanese record," said Japanese rider Kazunari Watanabe.

"We all rode very well in the race," said Japanese head coach Hideo Madarame.