QUZHOU, China, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- National record holder Yang Zhe swept three golds in the snatch, clean and jerk and overall in the 109kg category, as the China's men's weightlifting national championships concluded on Sunday in Quzhou, east China's Zhejiang province.

Nine national records were shattered during the four-day championships, with three of them better than the current world record, prompting national men's team coach Yu Jie to call the results "ideal."

"The performance of the athletes was well beyond my expectations. Training behind closed doors for 10 months without competition, they did well in terms of success and results," Yu said.

Yang Zhe, who was fourth in 105kg at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, now competes at 109kg after the International Weightlifting Federation changed the categories. On Sunday, he was mainly in a battle of his own, with all other lifters finishing their three attempts in the snatch before Yang went for his first at 186kg.

And Yang did successfully challenge himself, improving his own national snatch record to 198kg - one kilogram short of the world record set by Armenia's Simon Martirosyan - and the total record to 421kg after securing gold with a 223kg lift in the clean and jerk, where he tried to break the 227kg barrier but failed.

"Due to injuries, I only resumed systematic training a week before this match so I'm pretty satisfied with my snatch performance today," Yang told Xinhua. "However, I was too hasty in the final clean and jerk attempt and I did not breathe correctly. After this competition, I need to work more on the clean and jerk, which has always been my weakness."

In the +109kg division, Sun Kai from Jilin won two golds in the clean and jerk (230kg) and total (412kg), while the snatch gold went to his teammate Zhou Xin. Enditem

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