February 15, 2010
By JERÉ LONGMAN
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — As Wang Meng, China’s champion short-track speedskater, breezed through her first heat of the 500 meters Saturday night, she stayed well ahead of a crash that wiped out a competitor, set an Olympic record, then walked dismissively past waiting Chinese reporters.
Three potential gold medals await her. There was no time to stop and chat.
Anyway, before leaving Beijing, Wang, who won the 500 at the 2006 Winter Olympics, had said all she needed to say: “Unless I make mistakes, no one else will have any chance to win.”
No one expects China to dominate the 2010 Winter Olympics the way it ruled the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing. But its Olympic officials are hoping for a breakthrough that could bring perhaps 5 or more gold medals and about 15 over all — a significant number given that China has won only 4 previous golds and 33 cumulative medals since it began participating in the Winter Games in 1980 in Lake Placid, N.Y.
“Sure, we hope for a breakthrough, but it takes time,” Zhao Yinggang, China’s director of winter sports, said Saturday night after the speedskating competition, speaking through a interpreter. “Winter sports in China have such a short history. Training programs are not as good as summer programs. There is a lot of uncertainty in competition. We hope our skaters and skiers will do their best.”
Zhao said most participation in elite winter sports was limited to two provinces in the country’s far northeast — Heilongjiang and Jilin. With limited resources at the moment, China’s development plan seems to be to win as many medals as possible using as few athletes as necessary.
China has turned its focus to relatively new Olympic sports like short track, men’s and women’s aerials, snowboarding and women’s curling — events where it can quickly become an international power and, if necessary, import foreign coaches to provide expertise not yet available at home.
In a prominent team sport like hockey, Chinese women still lag behind the world’s best, as was apparent in a 12-1 loss to the United States on Sunday.
“They look and say, Where are the soft sports, where we can maximize our investment, where we can take advantage of our population pool?” said David Wallechinsky, an Olympic historian. “The East Germans used to do something similar, identifying individuals who can win more than one medal in a sport. It will be interesting to see what China can do if they zero in on other things. It’s not like they have no snow. There’s no reason they couldn’t be good in cross-country skiing and ski jumping.”
One of China’s first goals at the Vancouver Games is to try to unseat Russian dominance in a more traditional winter sport — pairs figure skating — which began Sunday.
Soviet or Russian pairs have won every Olympic competition since 1964 (Canadian skaters were given dual golds after the judging scandal in 2002). That stranglehold could be broken in Vancouver by the Chinese pairs of Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo; Pang Qing and Tong Jian;, and Zhang Dan and Zhang Hao, who finished first, fourth and fifth in Sunday’s short program.
Figure skating illustrates China’s broader approach, successes and limitations regarding winter sports. In a country of 1.3 billion people, there are only 20 skating clubs, said Yang Dong, the team leader of China’s Olympic figure skating squad. There are only 10 to 15 elite pairs in the country, fewer than 10 elite women and 10 to 20 elite men, Yang said.
The three Olympic Chinese pairs come from the country’s winter sports capital of Harbin in Heilongjiang Province, and are all tutored by the same coach, Yao Bin. Only one Chinese female singles skater, and no male singles skater, qualified for the Vancouver Games.
“We don’t have the foundation and the money to have the same number of clubs as in the U.S.,” Yang said. “Winter sports are very expensive compared to summer sports. With the development of our economy, hopefully in the near future, China can become more powerful.”
For the Vancouver Games, China has arrived with eight foreign coaches, according to the Xinhua news agency, including the coach of its curling team, a Canadian named Dan Rafael. Until 2003, apparently no one in China curled. Now the Chinese women are world champions and hope to upset Canada in their Olympic debut.
Another Canadian, Dustin Wilson, has built China into a freestyle skiing power. Han Xiaopeng won the men’s aerials at the 2006 Games, and the Chinese men and women might take four of the six available medals in Vancouver. Depth is building rapidly. Many of the country’s freestyle skiers and snowboarders are former gymnasts and acrobatics who excel in events that rely on innovative flips and twists.
“Maybe these events give Chinese and Asians an advantage because of our body type, like in gymnastics and diving,” Zhao said.
Jeff Wintersteen, the United States’ aerials coach, has studied and tried to emulate the Chinese academy training program, with a focus on the 2014 Games in Sochi, Russia, even recruiting a former female gymnast.
“I realized what was going on in China and that we needed to change things fundamentally in the U.S.,” Wintersteen recently told reporters.
In Vancouver, China’s female snowboarders are also expected to challenge the pre-eminence of the Americans and the Australians.
“Our long-term plan is to continue to popularize winter sports,” Zhao said. “We want boys and girls to go skating and skiing, not just in northeast China, but all over China.”
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