South Korea win men's team pursuit

DOHA, Dec 12 (Reuters) South Korea set a new Asian record to win the men's team pursuit today and take the country's third track cycling gold of the Asian Games.

The quartet of Hwang In-hyeok, Jang Sun-jae, Kim Dong-hun and Park Sung-baek lowered their own month-old mark to 4:12.746 to beat Iran in the gold medal race.

The South Koreans led from the start and picked up the pace after the halfway mark when the record was in sight.

''We looked at the scoreboard and we saw we were on course for the record, so we went for it,'' Park told reporters.

''We weren't expecting to beat the record. We knew it was good. This was all about winning the gold medal.'' Hossein Nateghi, Abbas Saedi Tanha, Mehdi Sohrabi and Amir Zargari, who had set the Games record in the preliminaries, picked up Iran's first medal of the track cycling events, finishing in 4:14.226.

China won the bronze medal race in 4:14.489.

''It was a tough race for us. They took our Games record.

We've raced a lot already and we're very tired,'' Iran's Saedi Tanha told Reuters.

''We felt there was a possibility we could win this. It's great to win a silver medal, but we have to be a little disappointed.'' South Korea have won three golds so far on the track, with China on two and Japan on one.

REUTERS SAM HT1717