Sun roars to second Games' gold

Chinese heavyweight Sun Yang battered his rivals to create history yesterday as the swimming Goliath scooped the first-ever Asian Games men’s 800 metres freestyle gold with another monstrous performance.

Greeted like a rock star with high-pitched squeals from a excitable section of female Chinese fans in Jakarta, the triple Olympic champion claimed a runaway victory in a new Games record of seven minutes, 48.36 seconds.

Sun, who blazed to the 200m title at the weekend pulled away over the second half of the race to leave Japan’s Shogo Takeda and Vietnam’s Nguyen Huy Hoang flailing in his wake.

“I was saving some energy for tonight’s relay,” growled Sun, who returns later in the men’s 4x200m freestyle relay. “The plan was to pick up the pace over the last 200m and it went well.”

Elsewhere, Japanese Olympic hold Rikako Ikee won her second and third gold medals of the competition in the 50m butterfly and 100m freestyle.

The 18-year-old, breezed to victory in the one-lap race in a Games-best 25.55 — almost half a second clear of China’s Wang Yichun. Ikee returned for swimming’s blue-riband event to duck under that record again, winning in 53.27 from China’s Zhu Menghui (53.56).