Kitajima, Park lead Asian Games swim program

SYDNEY — The Asian Games pool program will be notable for two Olympic swim stars who will compete in the six-day meet — Kosuke Kitajima and Park Tae-hwan — and one who won't: China's Liu Zige. Four-time Olympic breaststroke champion Kitajima leads Japan's contingent at the new Guangdong Olympic Aquatics Centre. Park, the 2008 Beijing Olympics 400-meter champion, won three golds, one silver and three bronzes for South Korea at the 2006 Asian Games in Doha, Qatar, and is attempting to recover his form after a poor world championships in Rome last year. Liu, who won the women's 200 butterfly at Beijing in an ultra-fast world-record time, is planning to skip the games to focus on other events such as the world championships at Shanghai next year and the 2012 Olympics in London. "She has been fatigued for almost two years after the Beijing Olympics. To prepare for the London Games, we'd better give her a rest to recover her strength and keep her form," Shang Xiutang, the vice-head of the national swimming governing body, told Chinese media. Liu's gold at Beijing was only China's third since the country's swimmers peaked at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, winning four. Since then the country has had to fight doping scandals that erupted over the next decade. Liu won the Beijing Olympics in 2 minutes, 4.16 seconds, 1.22 seconds faster than Australian Jessicah Schipper set at the 2006 Pan Pacific Championships in Canada. Kitajima, who won the both the 100- and 200-meter breaststroke titles in Athens in 2004 and at Beijing, is among 29 swimmers in Japan's team for the Nov. 12-27 Guangzhou games. He has been training at the University of Southern California since last year as he aims for a three-peat at the London Olympics in 2012. The selection was based on results of last month's Pan Pacific championships, where Kitajima won both the 100- and 200-meter breaststroke. Other prominent Japan swimmers include world 100-meter backstroke champion Junya Koga and world 200-meter butterfly bronze medalist Takeshi Matsuda. Aya Terakawa, who finished second in the women's 100 backstroke at the Pan Pacs, and freestyle swimmer Tomoko Hagiwara also gained berths. The Japan swimming federation, which had unofficially been provided 38 spots by the country's Olympic committee, decided to go with only top swimmers, dropping nine. "We have narrowed it down to a select few who will give our team a fighting chance," Koji Ueno, the head of Japan's swimming competition, told local media. Park, who is now training with Australian coach Michael Bohl, whose swimmers include triple Olympic individual medley champion Stephanie Rice, won the 400 freestyle at the Pan Pacifics with the year's fastest time. The 2007 world champion, Park had a disappointing run at the world championships in Rome in 2009 when he failed to reach the 400 freestyle final only a year after he gave South Korea its first Olympic swimming medal in Beijing. The pool program in Guangzhou runs from Nov. 13-18. A five-day diving competition expected to be dominated by China, synchronized swimming and water polo are also part of the games' aquatics program. – AP