Double Athens Olympic champion Kosuke Kitajima eased to defend his 200m breaststroke victory in Doha on Thursday at the Asian Games.

The 24-year-old clocked a time of two minutes 12.05 seconds to triumph again after the 100m win on Monday.

But the result was almost three seconds outside his own Asian mark of 2:09.42 set in Barcelona world championships in 2003.

He also created the then-world record in 2:09.97 in Busan Asian Games four years ago before he stormed to the victories in 100m and 200m events in Athens Olympics.

Another Japanese swimmer Daisuke Kimura took silver in 2:13.17 and Vladislav Polyakov of Kazakhstan, 50m breaststroke winner here, came third in 2:13.60.