(MENAFN- Arab Times) INCHEON South Korea Sept 26 (AFP): Gentle giant Zhou Lulu on Friday raised the heaviest single weight ever recorded by a woman weightlifter at the Asian Games but insisted she is just 'an ordinary girl.' Zhou broke Russian Tatiana Kashrina's world record in the clean and jerk by 2 kg with 192 kg and equalled the Russian's combined record of 334 kg in her one woman show in the super-heavyweight over 75 kg class. Having also eclipsing her London 2012 Olympics total of 333 kg which was a world record at the time Zhou said she could have done better.
'I'm not satisfied with that. It was only so-so' she told AFP after lifting 142 kg in the first discipline 4 kg below her Olympic performance. 'I'm disappointed that I didn't perform well in the snatch. There's nothing special about breaking the world record.' Her huge 140 kg (308lb) frame and fearsome stage presence notwithstanding Zhou considers herself like any other 26-year-old woman. 'I'm just an ordinary girl' she said. 'I'm a Pisces so I'm a bit of a romantic. I like buying pretty things.' Her Weibo microblog account in China is packed with posts about 'What age should I get married' and phrases such as 'I am an optimist' 'I am a peach girl' and 'Be happy every day.' She says she loves shopping with her friends but normally just goes along for fun as 'I can't find anything find anything to fit me'. Zhou cuts a much more frightening appearance on stage screaming 'Qing Song!' (relax!) at the bar before every lift but it belies her real character. 'It's not a contradiction between my gentle personality and what you see in training or on the stage' she said. Zhou saw off second-placed Mariya Grabovetskaya of Kazakhstan and bronze medallist Thailand's Chitchanok Pulsabsakul with ease Friday. Grabovetskaya was only 1 kg behind after the snatch on 141 kg but finished a distant 32 kg in arrears with Chitchanok a further 10 kg adrift after Zhou's astonishing final lift. Zhou has admitted in the past that she hated weightlifting when selected for the sport at primary school aged 11 but grew to love it. 'I didn't like it at first because the training so tough' she told the china.org.cn website last year. 'I gradually began to love it once I realised you don't have to worry about your body shape or if it is feminine.' Olympic superheavyweight champion Behdad Salimi confirmed his status as the world's strongest man Friday but came up short of beating his own weightlifting world record at the Asian Games. Iran's Salimi failed at a new snatch mark of 215 kg 1 kg above his record set in 2011 with his last lift on the way to a crushing victory. He had claimed before leaving Tehran last week that he had achieved 215 kg in training and he would do it again in Incheon. But he was never in control of the bar and it dropped to groans from a huge contingent of Iranians in the crowd. They were soon cheering their national hero to the rafters though as he completed a hat-trick of Games records in the over-105 kg class with a 210 kg snatch and 255 kg clean and jerk for an aggregate 365 kg in the final event of the weightlifting competition. 'I wanted to break my own record tonight but I'm very happy to win gold' Salimi said after adding a second Asian Games title to the 2011 world championship and 2012 Olympic gold medal. The man mountain who weighed in for the contest at a colossal 171 kg was in a class of his own. He finished a distant 40 kg ahead of second place Ai Yunan of China with Taiwan's Chen Shih-chien taking the last spot on the podium just 1 kg further back. 'I could have done better' said Chen. 'I'm happy with bronze but on another day I'm sure I could have silver.' It was a one-sided end to seven days of weightlifting that produced a series of incredible toe-to-toe battles and a slew of world records over eight men's and seven women's weight classes the last coming earlier Friday in the women's superheavyweight when China's Zhou Lulu lifted 192 kg in the clean and jerk. China topped the lifting tables with seven gold medals after winning two on the final day through Zhou and Yang Zhe in the men's 105 kg while the remarkable North Koreans took four back over the heavily fortified border to Pyongyang. Taiwan won two golds and Kazakhstan and Iran one each while hosts South Korea endured a disappointing week finishing with just one silver and one bronze medal as golden hope Sa Jae-Hyouk crashed out of the men's 85 kg on Wednesday with three 'no-lifts'.
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