MACAO, Nov. 3(Xinhuanet)-- Six days into the East Asian Games, China finally found a real challenger in Japan on Wednesday.

Japan swept 10 athletics events with China only winning three, and Chinese swimmers responded by sweeping seven out of eight gold medals and eclipsed two Asian records.

It seemed the games' brightest star Liu Xiang had taken steam away from the athletics meeting. Watched by just over 1,000 spectators scattered in the 16,000-seat stadium, Wednesday's competition posted a string of lackluster finishes by winners.

The ticketing office at the Macao Stadium still touted Liu Xiang Thursday afternoon although the Olympic champion was packingup at hotel after electrifying the crowd with a 110m hurdles victory on Wednesday.

Six misled students were seen asking for refunds because a ticketing staff had told them their idol would run in the men's 4x100m relay.

"We girls love Liu Xiang very much and now I am very disappointed," said Song Shuxiao, a freshman at Macao University of Science and Technology, who bought the cheapest ticket that cost 40 Macao pastacs(about 5 US dollars).

Song's roomie Huang Yanping said she envied venue volunteers because they were"so close to Liu Xiang".

Japan opened with four golds in the men's and women's half marathons, the men's hammer throw and the men's steeplechase in the morning and continued to dominate the men's pole vault, 400m, 1,500m, 4x100m relay and the women's 400m and 4x100m in the afternoon.

Takuro Mori won the weirdest pole vault competition in the world after he cleared 5.00 meters with the other two competitors scoring no mark.

Like in the men's hammer throw and 3,000m steeplechase, only three athletes competed in the pole vault event, in which Mori wasthe only one who cleared the bar.

Mori, whose personal best is 5.30 meters, flew over the 5m in his fourth attempt and flunked 5.20.

Zhang Hongwei of China and Satoru Yasuda of Japan, both having a better record than Mori, scorned the 5m mark and faced up to 5.20.

Both failed. No medal.

Yasuda's best height is 5.40m and Zhang last month picked a bronze medal at the National Games after clearing 5.40.

Chinese Song Jian won the men's long jump with an unimpressive leap of 7.77 meters, 57 centimeters outside of the games record, while his compatriot Li Rongxiang claimed the men's javelin throw in 79.75 meters.

Chinese runner Xie Sainan took the women's 1,500m in 4:20.54, over 16 seconds slower than the games mark.

Two Asian records tumbled as China beat Japan seven to one in the swimming pool, in which the latter saved some face thanks to Takeshi Matsuda, the winner of the men's 800m freestyle in 8:03.19.

Zhou Jiawei erased the men's 50m butterfly Asian mark with a golden swim of 23.98 seconds and Xu Yanwei clocked a continental record of 26.63 to win the women's 50m butter.

"I hadn't expected a new Asian record because I was exhausted after the Chinese National Games," said Zhou.

Three games records were bettered too: Ouyang Kunpeng timed 1:58.24 for the men's 200m backstroke gold; Zhang Lin won the men's 200m free in 1:48.64; Gao Chang took the women's 50m back in 28.52.

China also won the women's 4x200m(8:10.26) and 200m individual medley(Zhao Jing, 2:16.00).

As China and Japan squaring off in athletics and swimming, unmarked South Korea had a harvest in less-hyped events, sweeping four golds in its national sport of taekwondo, three in bowling, two in shooting and one in weightlifting.

China tops the medal tally with 87, followed by Japan(22), South Korea(20), Macao(9), Chinese Taipei(6), DPR Korea(4), Hong Kong(1), Mongolia(0) and Guam(0). Enditem