Mexico and USA Best for Teams
The USA and China among the women, Japan and China in men took the first honours at the 5th FISU World University Championships in the beautiful city of Mérida in Mexico.
The event continued with Chinese Taipei victory on the second day of competition. 2013 world champion and Rio Olympic bronze medallist Kuo Hsing-Chun swept the 58kg with a total just one kilo under her Olympic score and the Mexican hosts celebrated their first silver medal thanks to Janeth Gomez. In the men’s 69kg category 2015 Houston world champion Chinese Chen Lijun managed to defeat Korean Lee Sangyeon only on bodyweight (313kg for both) in a very close competition, while the home crowd rejoiced over two more bronze medals by Munoz.
After 11 bronze and silver medals collected, Mexico finally hit gold in the women’s 63kg where Anacarmen Torres Wong won the clean and jerk and the total gold medals in a close and exciting battle against her Japanese and Canadian opponents. In the men’s 77kg China’s Tang Jian stood out with his performance outscoring the silver medal winner, USA lifter Angelo Bianco by 25kg overall. In the women’s 69kg USA lifter Martha Ann Rogers took the gold with an unexpectedly large 20kg margin from 2014 defending University World champion Canadian Marie-Eve Beauchemin-Nadeau (335 to 315kg), while Yun-Szu Yang of TPE won bronze.
In the 85kg for men, Korean Jang Yeonhak proved to be unchallengeable and cemented his world champion position with an impressive hat trick and 344kg to his credit. In second place James Richard Tatum added 2 silvers to the USA collection and Poland made a debut with bronze by A. T. Pawlicki.
Thanks to Park Hanwong, Korea continued to overpower the field in 94kg. With just two valid lifts he collected all the three gold medals, leaving TPE lifters Chen Sheng-Ying and Tien Wei-Te in the runner-up and third positions, respectively.
In what is probably the last major competition under the ‘old’ rule giving advantage to lighter bodyweight, Yoshihiro Tada (JPN) beat local favourite Oscar D. Verdugo Ramirez, gold medallist in snatch, with the same total of 349kg in the 105kg at the University Worlds. Evan Graybill, USA picked up the bronzes.
In the women’s 75kg Mongolia’s only entry Ankhtsetseg Munkhjantsan confidently collected the 3 gold medals despite an elbow injury on her last jerk. Mexican Aremi Fuentes kept the silvers at home, while Canadian Kristel Ngarlem added 3 bronzes to her team’s rich medal collection.
The podium of the women’s +75kg in Merida will go down in history as the very last one at a World Championship, as after 1st January 2017 it will be replaced by two new categories of 90 and +90kg. Tania G. Mascorro won this significant gold for the host Mexico flanked by USA silver medallist Marissa Klingseis and bronze medallist Gladis Bueno, also Mexican.
The +105kg contest culminated in a rivalry for the champion title between the two Koreans in the category. Eventually, Lee Jaesang managed to work off his 15kg disadvantage from the snatch and beat his compatriot Hwang Wooman with an impressive 221kg jerk totalling 386kg on the latter’s 385kg and won.
The remaining medals were picked up by Slovakia’s Radoslav Tatarcik and Poland’s Przemyslaw Budek.
As for the teams, Mexico was the best in both genders; USA was the runner-up, also for both men and women.