26-year-old Universiade athletics record shattered

BANGKOK - The 26-year-old Universiade record of the men's 3000m steeplechase shattered Monday down as Halil Akkas of Turkey set the new best time of eight minutes and 20.83 seconds.

Waving and cheering up the audiences, Akkas even slowed down his step towards the sprint, know nothing about breaking the record, set by America's John Gregorek on 8:21.26 at Bucharest, Romania, in 1981.

The Turkish proved a real contender for next year's Beijing Olympics as he also won the 5,000m event last night.

Kenya's Barnabas Kirui finished second in 8:22.67, while Ion Luchianov of Moldova taking third back home.

Meanwhile, Portuguese female runner Jessica Augusto grabbed the gold medal in 5,000m race in another new games record of 15:28.78, contributing the first track-and-field title to her motherland.

Thais stole the final show of the inaugural Universiade shooting from the powerhouses Russia and China by grabbing two gold medals on Monday.

One missing point almost cost Thailand the gold medal before a double-check of the paper targets awarded the point back in the women's 50m rifle prone.

Tying with China with identical 1,742 points, Thailand was deduced to the second place because of lower scores from the last serie of ten shots.

"We double-checked the targets of all three teams in the leading positions and found one of them previously counted a nine was actually a ten," said Tan Weichang, the classification jury. " And the piece of paper target had been checked through a meterage machine for the hole."

"The jury board didn't know whose target it was, only to make sure that we made the correct counting," he added.

In previous competition, Janejira Srisongkram won the host country the first shooting gold by catching 100 birds out of 120 in the women's double trap event.

The Chinese lived up to the fame in the women's 25m pistol event by winning both the team and individual titles with international debutant Wang Jieyi on top of the individual ranking with a total of 785.7 points.

Japan stopped the gold-medal haul in the relay events of the United States by winning the women's 4x100m medley relay in the swimming competition.

The U.S. team was on the way for the fifth relay gold medal after it wrapped up the victories of the four relay events in the past four days.

Double-champion Aya Terakawa, who won the 50m and 100m backstroke events, conquered again on the first start for Japan, leading by 0.52 seconds ahead of the U.S., on third, in the first 100 meters.

The U.S. never really threatened the leader, even on the butterfly turn when Japanese Yuka Kato, who just came off from the 50m finals about one hour ago, kept the lead for good.

"I'm surprised. I'd not expected to beat the U.S. team, as they also gave out the 100 per cent of them in the final," Japanese head coach Hiroaki Kaneko said.

Japan finished with a time of four minutes and 3.11 seconds, while the U.S. timed 4:03.96. Canada took the bronze by 4:04.52.

The victory put Japan on the second place on the medal table with four golds, eight silvers and one bronze. The U.S. is still leading by 8-7-6.

The U.S. added two gold medals as Patrick Mellors started the day with the victory of 4:12.94 in the men's 400m medley while his teammate Adam Ritter added the men's 200m freestyle victory to his 100m silver medal by 1:47.42.

Thailand nailed down two taekwondo gold medals with Mae-num Chirdkiatisak claiming the women's 47kg and Chutchawal Khalaor the men's 54kg to cheer up the local audiences.

Chinese world champion Tong Wen easily toppled down Turkish judoka Belkis Zehra Kaya with an Ippon in one minute and 52 seconds for the first judo title in the women's over 78kg division.

Japanese judoka Takamasa Anai snatched the men's 100kg while South Korean Kim Sung Bum grabbed the men's over 100kg title.