The new golden girl of Chinese gymnastics He Ning was delighted to win her second medal of the 15th Asian Games by grabbing the women’s individual all-around title.

The 16 year-old, who burst onto the international scene earlier in 2006 by winning the World and Asian team championships, added an Asian Games team gold on 3 December to make it a trio of team golds, but today’s crown was her first major individual title.

Speaking about the difference between her individual medal and the one she collected at the 2006 World Championships in Denmark in October, she said: "They have different meanings. The one I won two months ago in Denmark was for our team. It was a joint effort. I think I am in better condition than at the World Championships, so I won the all-around today."

Scoring evenly throughout, He secured her crown by top scoring in two events – the floor exercise and the beam, and coming 2nd in the uneven bars and 3rd on the vault.

"I performed consistently mainly because my training is going well," said He, who was pushed all the way by 18 year-old teammate Zhou Zhuora, who was a member of China’s gold-winning women’s team. Zhuora finished just 0.400 points behind He to take silver.

He Ning can now look forward to winning further Doha 2006 medals in the individual disciplines. "I hope I can continue my good performance on other apparatus in the days to come."

DPR Korea’s Hong Su Jong, a silver medallist in yesterday’s team final, fought off Japan’s Miki Uemura to take the bronze medal.

The 15th Asian Games artistic gymnastics tournament continues at ASPIRE today and tomorrow 5-6 December.

DAGOC

Doha 2006