Hangzhou, Sep 28 (IANS): A couple of days before the start of the weightlifting competitions at 19th Asian Games, host China suffered a setback as it will be competing without the world’s strongest female weightlifter, who has pulled out of the Asian Games due to an elbow injury.
China’s super-heavyweight Olympic champion and world record holder Li Wenwen withdrew from the Asian Games on Thursday at the final verification of entries for the competition, which runs from September 30 to October 7.
Li sustained the injury during the recent World Championships in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where she failed to make a total. Her absence leaves China with a team of 13 in Hangzhou: six women and seven men.
China's dominant weightlifting team will not know what sort of challenge to expect from North Korea, whose lifters have not competed in international competition since December 2019.
At the 2018 Asian Games, North Korea (DPR Korea) showed its strength by winning eight of the 15 medal events. Between April and September 2019, DPRK lifters set five world records that still stand.
North Korea withdrew from the delayed Tokyo Olympic Games during the Covid-19 pandemic and later declined an opportunity to join the Paris qualifying programme in Cuba in June. The Asian Games is not an Olympic qualifier, and DPR Korea will not be in Paris even though it has won more Olympic medals in weightlifting than any other sport.
One of those world record holders, PAK Jongju, will compete at the Hangzhou Asian Games. Two of the DPR Korea team, RI Wonju and OH Kumthaek have never lifted in international competition before.
Chinese lifters won a record seven gold medals at Tokyo 2020, and China has eight leaders in the 10 Paris 2024 ranking lists. They also had seven winners at the IWF World Championships this September in Riyadh.
All seven world champions compete here, some at heavier weights because the category in which they won is not on the Asian Games programme.
Liu Huanhua has moved up 20kg in the past 10 months. He will compete in 109kg in Hangzhou, where his opponents include two Olympic champions from Uzbekistan, Ruslan Nurudinov and Akbar Djuraev.
China's Olympic 73kg champion SHI Zhiyong will not compete because he is recovering from injury, which leaves the clean-and-jerk world record holder Rahmat Erwin ABDULLAH of Indonesia in a rematch with the man who beat him in Riyadh, Weeraphon Wichuma of Thailand.
China has two world record holders in its women's team: Jiang Huihua and Liao Guifang. Li Wenwen's withdrawal deprives the host of a third World record holder in +87kg.