Park Tae Hwan rushed to the gold in the men's 200m freestyle in an Asian
record time in the swimming pool at the 15th Asian Games here on Sunday.
The South Korean claimed the first swimming gold for his country in Doha in
one minute 47.12, beating his own previous Asian best time
created in August by 0.39 seconds.
Zhang Lin from China settled for the silver in 1:47.85 while Daisuke Hosokawa
of Japan took the bronze in 1:49.62.
Park and Zhang are expected to compete against each other again in the 400m
and 1,500m freestyles.
The last time the two raced together in the 200m free was at the 2006 Pan
Pacifics, where Park got a sliver ahead of Zhang but the two were separated by
just eight one-hundreds of a second.
"My strategy was OK but my turning technique was not as good as Park," said
Zhang. "When I turned for the last 50 meters, I found he had led me by half a
body-length."
"It was a pity that I did not win but my focus will be the Beijing Olympics,"
he added.
