SINGAPORE: They are the biggest rivals on the Asian stage. Over recent years though, China have clearly become the leading nation in sport, with Japan battling it out with South Korea behind it.

The inaugural Asian Youth Games here is no different, with the Chinese leading the overall tally with 13 gold medals, nine more than Japan and 10 more than South Korea.

The track and field competition began on Tuesday, with 18 gold medals up for grabs in the first three days of competition. To date, China have plundered seven gold medals at Bishan Stadium.

In the nine events on Thursday, Chinese featured in five of them, and they won all five gold medals. Their boys won the 110m hurdles, 400m hurdles and long jump, while the girls bagged gold in the discus and 400m hurdles.

Not one of the Chinese winners on Thursday took their success for granted.

"A lot of the athletes here have shown that they have good potential. I can't say for sure that China will dominate the athletics programme tomorrow, but all of us will definitely try our best," said Cheng Yafan, winner of the 400m hurdles for girls in a time of 1 minute 2.15 seconds.

Huang Haibing, who took the long jump (boys) gold with a leap of 7.28 metres, added: "It looks like Japan will be our closest challengers."

Japanese athletes won the boys' 400m and girls' 100m hurdles. So far, they have won three golds in athletics entering the final day of track and field today.

Singapore's Inez Leong came in third in the girls' 100m hurdles, making it three bronze medals for the hosts on the penultimate day of athletics. - TODAY