ESSEN, Germany, July 21 (Xinhua) -- Slovenian Klara Lukan clinched the first track and field gold medal of the Rhine-Ruhr World University Games with a Games record time of 31 minutes 25.84 seconds in the women's 10,000m on Monday.
Lukan maintained her leading position throughout the 25-lap race and was never really challenged to secure Slovenia's first medal in the 2025 event, but she refused to define her win as an easy one.
"Maybe it's just the expression on my face [that makes it look easy], but it's always hard. It's never easy. Otherwise everyone could do it," said Lukan.
"Everything went according to plan today. At first, I wanted to do more tactical [things], but you know, my style of running is to just push the best. I kept that, that's the way I ran my whole career, so why would I do something differently? It brought me many successes."
Kenya also claimed its first medal here with Sarah Wanjiru Njeri's silver, timing a personal best of 31:41.80. Spain's Alicia Berzosa Martin bagged the bronze in 32:00.73, marking her PB as well. China's Ma Xiuzhen finished in 12th place in 33:04.85.
U.S. swimmers repeated their feat in the pool as they pocketed four of the six gold medals on offer.
Women's 100m butterfly gold went to Leah Elizabeth Shackley in 58.16 seconds. Matthew Carl King grabbed the men's 100m freestyle title in 48.01s before hitting the double in the mixed relay. Kate Morgan Hurst captured the women's 1,500m free gold in 16:15.40. Team USA prevailed in the mixed 4x100m free relay in 3:24.27, followed by Japan (+2.59s) and South Africa (+4.24s).
"The first [100m] win was great. It's always great to get a win for the team. I was a little disappointed I was 48.01 [seconds], so I wanted to go into the relay and sneak under that," said King.
Yumeno Kusuda delivered Japan its first swimming gold from the women's 200m breaststroke in 2:26.15. Her teammate Yuyumi Obatake was 2.02 seconds behind in second place, and Spain's Aina Fernandez Gonzalez trailed by 2.33 seconds in third.
Men's 50m backstroke title was taken by South African Pieter Theunis Coetze in 24.49 seconds.
China's sole gold of the day came from diving, as China's Wang Weiying triumphed in the women's 3m springboard with 344.25 points, marking her third medal at the Games after a silver in the 10m platform and a gold in the synchronized 3m springboard.
Wang's teammate Qu Zhixin secured second place with 25.70 points behind and Germany's Lena Hentschel took the bronze, 78.50 points adrift of the winner.
"I am very happy with what I got so far. But I also have goals for the future, I want to pursue higher achievements in my life. I am looking forward to having an even better outcome in the future," said Wang.
"I am trying to develop my skills in many diving categories," she added, commenting on competing in both the springboard and platform events.
South Korea won its fourth fencing gold here after easing past Italy 45-26 in the women's foil team final. Japan snatched its first fencing gold by edging Hungary 45-44 in the men's epee team.
In taekwondo, Zurab Kintsurashvili earned Georgia its first gold medal here after he beat Brazil's Vinicius Assis Matos in the men's 74kg final. Turkiye's first gold also came from taekwondo as Sevval Cakal overcame Czech Petra Stolbova in the women's 62kg. South Korea added two more taekwondo golds to its medal collection, notching a total of six in the sport, with victories of Song Da-bin in the women's +73kg and Kang Sang-hyun in the men's +87kg.
After the fifth competition day, the United States has extended its lead in the medal tally with 17 golds, nine silvers and 17 bronzes. China remains in second place with 10 golds, 13 silvers and three bronzes, followed by South Korea with 10 golds, five silvers and 11 bronzes. ■
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