Xing Huina (left) was stripped of the women's 1,500 meters gold medal for a foul against second placed Liu Qing (right).(Photo Source: Sina)

Olympic champion Xing Huina was stripped of the women's 1,500 meters gold medal at the 10th National Games after she was confirmed to have fouled against second placed Liu Qing in Nanjing on Wednesday.

According to a statement by the Arbitration Panel of the Athletics Competition of the National Games, Xing elbowed Liu in the final straight of the women's 1,500 meters race.

Liu was then announced as the winner while Xing was stripped ofher result in the event. This is the first case in the games to change the result with appeal.

Xing had clocked 4 minutes and 3.98 seconds to beat Shanxi's Liu Qing on a narrow edge of 0.02 seconds before coaches and officials of the Shanxi athletics team appealed to the arbitration panel for the foul against their middle-distance runner.

"Xing Huina elbowed Liu Qing in the final meters after Liu had start to sprint with 200m to go. That's a severe foul," an anonymous official from the Shanxi team told press in anger at the tunnel connecting the competition field and the press center.

"Xing is the Olympic champion and she's experienced. Such kind of technical foul should not have happened on her," he said. "We can be definitely sure that she made the foul in purpose."

During his fevered speech to the press, a umpire walked out the competitive field, and Liu Qing's coach Zhang Min cried out, stepped upwards and fell down on knees to beg a fair judge, which led to a turbulence in the tunnel.

"Everybody has seen what happened on the track. I just want a fair competition," said Liu Qing when leaving the track.

The 19-year-old had beaten Xing in the women's 1,500m at this year's national athletics championships.

In Wednesday's race, Xing Huina ran out to lead the first groupmade up of the later top four finishers in as early as the second lap, but was overtaken by Liu Qing only 200 meters to go before the elbowing case happened.

"Women's 1,500 meters is not the event that I mostly focus on, and I'm glad to take a gold medal of it," said Xing right after the race, who should have improved her personal best of 4:09.01 set two years ago by 5.03 seconds if Wednesday's result were not stripped.

"I've been worry about my weakness in sprint all the time before tonight's win, and next year I'll try to make more improvement on it," Xing added then.

The women's 1,500m running has been taken as a special trainingcourse by the long-distance specialist after she settling for a disappointed fifth in women's 5,000m at Shanghai Grand Prix Meeting a month ago.

The 21-year-old Xing, who won the Olympic gold of women's 10,000m last year in Athens with a result of 30:24.36, has retained her dominance in Monday's long-distance race by beating national teammate Sun Yingjie with a time of 31 minutes and 0.73 seconds.