Wang wins tennis gold and Olympic berth

China’s Wang Xiyu, fresh from conquering top seed Alexandra Eala, toppled Zhang Shuai to win Asian Games women’s tennis singles gold yesterday — and a ticket to the Los Angeles Olympics.

The 25-year-old Wang breezed past her compatriot 6-2, 6-1 in 66 minutes at the Higashiyama Park Tennis Center in Nagoya.

Tennis is one of seven sports at the Games where the winners receive an Olympic qualification place.

Wang paid tribute to the 37-year-old Zhang, who has won multiple Grand Slam doubles titles and has now added a second Asian Games singles silver medal to the one she won in 2018 in Jakarta.

The veteran Zhang also bagged a team tennis gold in Guangzhou in 2010, when Wang would have been just nine years old.

“She is someone I really respect. Everything that she’s been through is also a form of encouragement to me,” Wang said.

“Still, on the court, the biggest form of respect I can show is by bringing my best to play her.”

The one-sided match was a contrast to the battle Wang had with Philippines star Eala 24 hours earlier, when the Chinese world number 85 came through 3-6, 6-3, 6-2 after two hours and 34 minutes of intense action.

“This is what sport, what elite competition, is like. Your actions speak for you,” added Wang.

“It’s when you experience success through the trials that you know what it was all for. Keep trying,” she said.

She then revealed her tennis skills were way ahead of her culinary efforts, but said it was important never to give up.

“I tried to make a dish of stir-fried cauliflower and it all became burnt,” Wang said. “There’s some difficulty in that dish, it’s so easy to get it wrong. I’ll keep trying.”

The men’s singles gold medal match tomorrow would see Hong Kong’s world No. 100 Coleman Wong take on China’s 111th-ranked Wu Yibing.

Reigning champions South Korea yesterday struck with eight minutes left to seal a 2-1 win over a “proud” China to reach the Asian Games men’s soccer final. The South Koreans are to face either hosts Japan or Uzbekistan for gold on Saturday as they pursue a fourth consecutive title. Uzbekistan and Japan were tied 1-1 as of press time last night. Bae Jun-ho was their hero, ghosting in at the back post to head in a dramatic 82nd-minute winner at Nagai Stadium.

Men’s soccer at the Asian Games consists of under-23 squads with three overage players. “We were expecting a challenging match but we persevered,”

COURT STARS: Taiwan tennis sensations Hsieh Su-wei and Liang En-shuo advanced to the women’s doubles quarter-finals, along with Chan Hao-ching and Wu Fang-hsien Taiwan yesterday picked up two more bronze medals at the Asian Games in Japan, bringing their medal total to 39, including three golds and 10 silvers, to rank 14th in the overall standings. Lin Yu-ting guaranteed herself at least a silver medal in boxing after she outclassed Uzbekistan’s Sitora Turdibekova 5-0 in their women’s 60kg semi-final at the Nishio Gymnasium, putting the Taiwanese Olympic champion just one win from a second Asian Games gold.

Lin is tomorrow to face China’s Yang Chengyu in the gold-medal showdown. The 30-year-old thanked the medical team afterwards for treating the cut to her nose she sustained in

The Football Association of Ireland (FAI) has found itself divided ahead of their two Nations League clashes with Israel, with the players disagreeing over whether to boycott the first game today and goalkeeper Gavin Bazunu withdrawing from the squad. After hours of fraught meetings among the players and occasionally involving coaches and officials, FAI chief executive officer David Courell said at a news conference that had been delayed by several hours that a “significant majority” of the squad had agreed to play the game in Hungary, but it was far from a unanimous decision.

The handful of Irish journalists present questioned Courell

The Asian Games has crowned teenage champions before, but this edition has witnessed stunning successes by child prodigies, including Yuki Kurihara standing atop the podium aged just 11. The Japanese primary school student beat opponents three times his age on the way to a historic gold in e-sports in Nagoya. He is Japan’s youngest Asian Games winner in history and almost certainly the youngest the Games have ever seen.

Kurihara did not even react after taking home the gold in Saturday’s final in Puyo Puyo Champions, a puzzle game where players try to clear their screen of colored blobs by lining them up