How Did China the "Latecomer" Catch up in Winter Sports?

China first competed at the Winter Olympics in 1980, having won zero medals in the following decade and zero gold medals in the next one. In the third ten-year period, China won 3 golds, 4 silvers and 2 bronzes at the Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Olympics. Since then, China began to show growing strength in medals of winter sports such as short track speed skating.
Another decade kicked off in grander fashion, Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games ushering in a new era of global winter sports.
The Winter Olympics have been held for nearly a century. Countries like Canada, Norway, the United States, Germany and Russia have been holding advantages in winter sports, but how did China the latecomer break through? Recently, China News Service interviewed some athletes, who bore witnesses to historical global winter events, in the hope of sorting out the development of China's competitiveness at Winter Olympics.
From 0 to 1
Ye Qiaobo is one of China's winter Olympic icons. At the 1992 Winter Olympics, the 28-year-old Chinese speed skater won two silver medals in the 500-meter and 1,000-meter speed skating events, and her silver in the 500 meter was the first ever medal for a Chinese athlete at the Winter Olympics.
Only four months after the legal status of the Chinese Olympic Committee (COC) being reinstated in the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on October 25, 1979, China decided to compete at the US Winter Olympics. In 1980, China urgently formed a team of 28 athletes to participate in speed skating, figure skating, cross-country skiing, alpine skiing and biathlon.Ye Qiaobo had experienced the darkest and gloomiest decade following China's first participation in the Winter Olympics. "Except for Cao Guifeng, who won the 16th place in speed skating, all the other events were ranked at the bottom." Ye Qiaobo recalled.
In 1985, Ye Qiaobo joined China's national speed skating training team. There were very few winter sports athletes in China. Shamed by their poor performances in their Olympic Winter debut, Ye and her teammates were determined to win a better place in the events next year.
But we had to admit that winter sports had been thriving for a hundred years abroad until then, and the gap between China and Europe as well as the United States was huge in every aspect. At that time, Ye Qiaobo only had one pair of skates. Ye once participated in a World Cup competition before the 1992 Winter Olympics, but her skate blades suddenly fell off before the event. If she had changed skates, it would have taken her a few days before the new boots fit. But she could not afford the time. So She found a local garage in hope that it could be repaired. But unfortunately, no one actually knew how to attach a skate blade to a skate boot through welding. Having no choices , she had to gesture to the shop assistant for electric welding machine and soldering tin, and then welded the blade awkwardly to the boot in person while trying to recall how her coach ever fixed them. "Regardless of that, I still won two gold medals the next day." Ye said.
On top of the poor training conditions, China team also lacked scientific ways of training athletes. Before the 1970s, world athletes often increased training intensity to improve athletic performance, but since then, they began to understand the importance of introducing scientific ways of training and put them into practice. Ye Qiaobo was then good at 500-meter and 1000-meter speed skating. She had very strong explosiveness, but lacked endurance. Her speed dropped very fast in the last one fifth of total distance no matter in 500m or 1000m speed skating. She had been trying every means to overcome her weakness, but it was all to no avail. Things did not change until the year of 1989 when she consulted a couple coaching at a speed skating club of the Netherlands, a country with an edge on speedy skating. During that period of time she was competing abroad.
"Not until then did I learn that shifting gears is the key." Ye Qiaobo said. The Dutch coaches told her that pounding heartbeats and shortness of breath would lead to lactic acid built-up in her muscles, so she should exercise her muscles even more intensely when they happened to her. They also told her that only through repeated stimulation and frequent breaking of the limit could she solve the problem of slowing down in her last leg. "In addition, a short-term athlete training program was adopted by the Netherlands, and it is sometimes carried out just within a week." Thanks to her adoption of such new training methods, Ye did make significant improvements at last in her athletic performance considering her overall abilities.
Before the 1992 Winter Olympics, Ye Qiaobo had won 9 gold medals in global events. She was full of confidence in winning the first gold medal at the Winter Olympics. But in the 500-meter speed skating final at the Winter Olympics, she got bumped by a foreign competitor and lost to an American athlete by 0.18 seconds. The referee did not call that a foul, Ye Qiaobo refused to accept the result, and chased the referee with skate guards, only to find that the referee quickly disappeared from the large crowd. Yet, this silver medal is the China's first Winter Olympic medal, a big breakthrough.
Tactical breakout
In 1993, Li Chengjiang, a 14-year-old teenager from Changchun, Jilin Province, was selected into the national figure skating training team, and three years later he was selected into the national team.
Figure skating consists of various elements such as jumping, spinning, footwork, music, and combination. Chinese figure skating team has traditionally valued degree of difficulty more than performance.. This tradition was most prevailing during Li Chengjiang's period. In 1998, Guo Zhengxin was the first athlete in the world to complete quad toeloop followed by double toeloop in the Olympic Games. Other Chinese athletes such as Zhang Min, Li Yunfei and Li Chengjiang, all performed the most difficult jumps on the rink.
Li Chengjiang said that this was the "tactic" of the Chinese team in those early years. In order to catch up with countries strong in figure skating such as Russia, the United States and Canada, China had to figure out a way. At that time, difficulty scores counted a lot in the total scores in international competitions, thus the Chinese team decided on a path to "compete with other countries by higher degrees of difficulty ".
This tactic worked. At the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, China got all the three seats, and won the bronze medal in pair skating. Shen Xue paired with Zhao Hongbo, won China's first gold medal in pair skating at the ISU World Championships that year.
In 2002, Yang Yang, a woman short track speed skater, won China's first gold medal at the Winter Olympics. As inspired by the news, Zhang Hui, an athlete from Heilongjiang Province, decided to switch from speed skating to short track speed skating. In 2008, she was selected into the Chinese team. Only half a year later, her name appeared in the World Cup squad. Surprisingly, she broke the world record for women's 3000m relay in the semi-finals of the ISU World Cup with Wang Meng, Zhou Yang and Liu Qiuhong in her first World Cup journey.
"I am lucky to be an Olympian in Wang Meng's era." Zhang Hui told the reporter. In her opinion, Wang Meng played a more critical role in Women's 3000m Relay in addition to their coach Li Yan. At that time, Wang Meng was the absolute leader in the world short track speed skating competition; in the team, Wang Meng was also the "backbone".
Zhang Hui and her teammates found that the Chinese team's Speed Skating World Cup gold medals were times more than those of South Korean, but in the Winter Olympics, they always lost to South Korea. Before the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, Sun Linlin, Wang Meng, Zhang Hui and Zhou Yang studied the videos of South Korean team's competition performance in their spare time, analyzing the skills, skating routes and habits of pushing of every South Korean athlete in the relays, and even their strength of pushing and speed of cornering were carefully analyzed. "We have won championships in all the events of the World Cups. As long as we do not foul or fall, we will certainly win this gold medal," said Zhang Hui. In the match, they were the second to cross the finishing line . The South Korean athletes had already waved their national flag to celebrate. Coach Li Yan immediately appealed. In the end, the chief referee, after watching the replay, ruled that the South Korean athlete had fouled and thus their team got disqualified and the Chinese team won the championship, breaking the South Korea's 16-year monopoly on the Olympic gold medals in that event.
"Strong on Ice and Weak on Snow"
"Strong on ice and weak on snow" has always been a pain for China's progress in winter games. China has won 13 gold medals in 6 Winter Olympics, with 12 for ice games and only 1 for snow games. However, gold medals in snow events account for 70% of the total in Winter Olympics. This is a drag on China's Winter Olympics performance.
Recognized as the cradle of China's ice and snow sports for a long time, Heilongjiang and Jilin are the two provinces in China which have provided the national team with most of its athletes. Ice sports have been popular in Heilongjiang and Jilin. However, the journey for snow sports has not been easy since snow events can be greatly affected by climate, mountain shape, geology and venue, and they also require more professional equipment. There was no Alpine ski center in China until 2017. Ye Qiaobo mentioned that there was no ski lifts in China in the 1980s, and athletes could manage to ski only twice a morning. "Wearing snow boots and carrying heavy sleds, athletes had to wade the knee-deep snow to climb the mountain step by step. It took them 50 minutes to get to the top but only tens of seconds to ski down. "
According to the China Ski Industry White Book, there were only 11 ski resorts in China back in 1996, and the market began to grow rapidly after 2010, while the total number of ski resorts reached 770 in the year of 2019.
This rapid growth partly owes to the breakthrough strategy China adopted in the early phase of its winter sports progress. Under the guidance of the Olympic Glory-Winning Program Guideline, China decided to focus on those medal events which are less demanding for venues, such as figure skating, short track speed skating and speed skating at this early stage.
In the past few years, China has built indoor snow resorts, extended snow training time and improved its training conditions. More importantly, it has nurtured cross-border and cross-event talents. The Freestyle Skiing Aerials team was the first to choose its cross-border talents: Han Xiaopeng as the gold medalist of Men's Aerials in the 2006 Winter Olympics used to be trained in the acrobatics team of a sports school since childhood and switched to Aerials at the age of 13. Considering high requirements for athletes with their upper limb strength and core strength, the Chinese sled team has selected some athletes from canoeing, javelin throwing and other track and field events in various provinces and cities.
Time of Beijing Winter Olympics
In January, 2022, 30 years after Ye Qiaobo won China's first medal in the Winter Olympics, her short documentary the Winner is Fearless was released The film showed us her fight for the 17th Winter Olympics in 1994. She managed to win China a medal in the 1000-meter speed skating event when she suffered serious leg injury and had to travel back to her motherland in a wheelchair. The Qiaobo Spirit is named after her due to her fearless fighting spirit.
At the end of the short documentary, Ye Qiaobo met Gu Ailing (Eileen Gu), a talented skier born after the year of 2000. Nowadays, athletes can enjoy more from the sport itself. Ailing told Ye Qiaobo that she skied because she loved it, since the sport provided her with the sense of freedom and creativity, and it also helped to boost her self-confidence. Through the dialogue between the two Winter Olympic medalists, the Olympic spiritual legacy is here to converge and carry on.
As the host, China has made breakthroughs in many events. Events such as Alpine skiing and ice hockey, which used to be weak in China, were all qualified for the Winter Olympics for the first time.
A group of young athletes emerged. Gu Ailing drew the most attention at home and abroad in the Beijing Winter Olympics. Last year, 17-year-old Su Yiming won China the first gold medal in men's slopestyle event in Snowboard World Cup, and was highly anticipated in this Winter Olympics.
As to traditional gold medal winning events, Ni Huizhong, director of Winter Sports Administrative Center under the General Administration of Sport of China, said that the short track speed skating team will be the major player whatever result the Chinese delegation would get in the Beijing Winter Olympics. to make
At this Winter Olympics, Chinese men's ice hockey team was qualified for the Winter Olympics for the first time. Gao Hongqun, deputy director of Qiqihar Sports Bureau, told reporters that since ice hockey allows physical collision, European and American athletes have their innate advantages. In addition, in the tournament, Chinese ice hockey team had to face Canada, the United States and Germany, which are all top teams China had never met in competitions before. No one can shake the positions of these countries in ice hockey.
"Should we quit the game when facing such powerful competitors? No. Everyone recognizes their competence, but countries still play in the game of ice hockey simply to make progress. "Gao Hongqun said. "The team spirit of group sports is also important. we coordinate, cooperate and make up for each other".
"Our debut in the Winter Olympics itself is history-making." Gao HongQun said.