South Korea captured a historic gold medal in the men's 4x200-meter freestyle relay swimming at the Asian Games in China on Monday.
The quartet of Yang Jae-hoon and Lee Ho-joon, Kim Woo-min and Hwang Sun-woo gave the country its first-ever relay gold medal in the Asian Games with a new continental record of 7:01.73.
For South Korea, the silver in the men's 4x200m freestyle relay in 1994 had been its best Asiad performance in relay swimming.
China finished in second place at 7:03.40, followed by Japan at 7:06.29.
The South Korean team has been breaking its own national record at virtually every meet. While finishing sixth at the world championships in July, the same four swimmers broke the South Korean record twice on the same day -- first in the heats and then in the final, finishing with a time of 7:04.07.
That record tumbled once again Monday, as the relay team moved into uncharted territory for South Korean swimming.
Yang Jae-hoon, long considered the weakest link of the team, led off the relay and held his ground. He was in third place through the first 150m but made the exchange at 200m in second place, 0.87 behind China's Wang Shun.
Lee Ho-joon then lifted South Korea into first place at the 300m turn, 0.46 second ahead of Niu Guangsheng of China. Lee maintained his lead over Niu at the halfway point of the race, giving Kim Woo-min a lead of 0.45 second.
And Kim Woo-min ran away from there, posting an impressive 200m split of 1:44.50 -- the fastest by anyone in the final. By the time Hwang Sun-woo jumped in as the anchor, South Korea had a 1.94-second lead.
Hwang pushed that advantage to 3.20 seconds with 50m remaining, with China's final swimmer, Pan Zhanle, unable to make up any ground. It was a race against the record books for South Korea by that point, and Hwang covered his leg in 1:45.04 to give his team the gold and the Asian record.
Source: Yonhap News Agency