Kim Hyung Chil, 47, was killed after his horse Bundaberg Black was caught on an obstacle in wet and difficult conditions and fell onto him during the cross country event.

"The rider had to take the weight of Bundaberg Black when the horse fell trying to clear an obstacle," Dr. Abdulwahal Al-Mussleh, head for health care and doping control of the DACOG, told a press conference.

Al-Mussleh said that Kim was then rushed to Hamad General Hospital near the athletes village, but died shortly after arrival without recovering consciousness. "He was declared dead at 10:50 am," added Abdulwahal.

The heaviest rain in 42 years in Doha fell from early morning and washed out the soft tennis and tennis competitions but Christopher Hodson, vice president of the International Equestrian Federation (IEF), rejected speculations that wet conditions was the cause of Kim's death.

"We have opened a formal inquiry into this tragic accident. I don't want to speculate on the results of that inquiry until it is completed," said Hodson. "To my knowledge it is the first time this has happened at the Asian Games."

Kim was the oldest member of South Korea's equestrian team. He won silver in the team competition in Busan 2002.

A minute's silence was observed in all venues to mourn the rider's death, which shocked the whole South Korean delegation.

In the pouring rain early morning, the athletics competition kicked off and produced two gold medals. Chinese walkers won both with Han Yucheng winning the men's 20km and Liu Hong walking away with women's 20km event.

South Korea's wunderkind Park Tae Hwan highlighted the last day's swimming competition when Tao Li brought Singapore the only gold medal in this sport here.

Japan was the biggest winner of the day, taking three golds to tie China at 16 in total while China had one gold to their name.

The 17-year-old Park, already a 200m free gold winner, rewrote the Asian Games record again when he took gold in the men's 1,500min 14 minutes 55.03 seconds to improve the previous mark by 5.24.

The 16-year-old Tao, born in China, stunned Asian Games champions to win the women's 50m butterfly, a newly-added event in the swimming program.

World short course champion Qi Hui clinched the 200m individual medley title to give China the only gold of the night.

Double Athens Olympic champion Kosuke Kitajima eased to retain his 200m breaststroke after his triumph in the 100m on Monday. Junya Koga pulled off the men's 50m backstroke title. Japan's other gold was from the men's 4x100m medley relay.

China again missed a clean sweep of seven gold medals in the table tennis tournament after eight day's competition. Paddlers from Hong Kong of China snatched the only gold missing from China's pocket, after Li Ching and Ko Lai Chak gave a shock 4-2 defeat to China's Olympic champions Ma Lin and Chen Qi.

On Thursday afternoon, it was all about China who celebrated triple victories in the mixed doubles, women's singles and men's singles final.

Former world champions Ma Lin and Wang Nan won the mixed doubles final against newly-combined Lee Jung Woo and Lee Eun Hee after denying a late comeback from the South Koreans.

The women's singles title went to China's teenage paddler Guo Yue, who managed to hold her nerves to rally past veteran Tie Yanaof Hong Kong, China, 4-3 to claim her first victory in major tournament. Wang Hao won the final between teammates for the men's singles gold.

Ding Junhui, winner of the snooker UK Championship last year, retained his singles title on Thursday, beating fellow Chinese Liang Wenbo 4-2 in the final. The 19-year-old will fly back to Britain to defend his UK Championship to start in York this weekend.

With seven more gold medals from shooting (3), rowing (3) and taekwondo (1), China's gold medal tally rose to 90. Japan remains second with 26 and South Korea is third with 19. Kazakhstan stands fourth with 10.