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Olympics-Brazil's Santana stuns rivals with record time at Youth Games

NANJING, China, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Brazil's hopes of producing a homegrown winner at the 2014 Rio Olympics began to look plausible on Friday when Matheus Santana won the men's 100 metres freestyle final at the Youth Games. His record-breaking swim stunned his rivals and endorsed the theory that the experience of competing in China would help in the moulding of future champions. The 18-year-old Brazilian cruised to victory in 48.25 seconds - a world record for a junior swimmer and faster than Michael Phelps, Olympic champion Nathan Adrian and world champion James Magnussen managed at the Pan Pacific championships on the same day. Santana won one of nine gold medals decided on the final day of swimming competition. China collected two more golds, including the relay, one of the sport's new events, to finish at the top of the medals table in the pool, followed by Russia. In weightlifting, Russian Khetag Khugaev, who also tried his hands at wrestling as a kid, smashed the competition in the 85 kilogram category to win gold. "Of all my awards, I treasure the gold medal in the Youth Olympics most and I would like to win another gold medal in Rio in two years' time," Khugaev said after a total lift of 355 kg, ahead of Uzbek Fakhoodbek Sobirov, second with 321 kg. "I have been doing weightlifting since I was eight and I did four years of wrestling prior to that." Thai Duanganksorn Chaidee was a comfortable winner in the women's +63kg category as her total lift of 244kg was 16kg more than closest challenger Svetlana Shcherbakova of Russia. "I expected to win a medal but not the gold," she said afterwards. "I think the people of Thailand will be very happy with my result." SWEET REVENGE In badminton, hosts China mainatined their world domination as Shi Yuqi and He Bingjiao bagged the men's and women's singles gold medals respectively. Top seed Shi defeated compatriot and world junior champion Lin Guipu in straight sets while He avenged her world junior championships final loss against Akane Yamaguchi by rallying to defeat the Japanese in a hard-fought final. "I was so tired by the second game, but I kept thinking about my coach telling me that I had to keep going no matter how tired I am. The crowd's cheers also helped," He said after her 22-24 23-21 21-17 victory. The mixed doubles title, featuring mixed international teams, was bagged by Cheam June Wei of Malaysia and NG Tsz Yau of Hong Kong after they defeated Japanese Kanta Tsuneyama and Chinese Taipei's Lee Chia-hsin. Colombia won the men's cycling gold after John Andreson Rodriguez Salazar survived the heat and challenging conditions to grab enough points to put his team at the top of the leasderboard. Rodriguez Salazar, partnered by Brandon Smith Rivera Vargas, managed 11th place in the road race, but his seven points took the team to 273 points for the gold. Temperatures touched 31 degrees with a humidity of 95 percent as one rider after another crashed at the Laoshan Road Cycling Course. "Yesterday, we tried the course and it didn't look so hard, but in the race it was hard. Some countries were strong, so it was a hard race all day," Rodriguez Salazar said. (Writing by Sudipto Ganguly in Mumbai and Julian Linden in Singapore; editing by Tim Collings)