Beijing, Jan 29 (DPA) China hopes its largest ever winter Olympic sports team will achieve a breakthrough next month in Vancouver and make progress towards emulating the success of the nation’s summer Olympians, state media said Friday.
China will send 91 athletes plus 91 coaches and officials to Vancouver, after sending 76 competitors to the previous games in Turin in 2006.
China won two gold, four silver and five bronze medals in Turin, including its first gold medal in skiing.
In Vancouver, the Chinese team will compete in 49 of the 86 disciplines in 15 sports.
“We hope that our athletes could make a breakthrough in Vancouver and surpass the previous games’ results,” Zhao Yinggang, the head of China’s winter Olympics team, was quoted as saying at a ceremony to announce the athletes.
Among China’s top medal hopes are defending women’s short-track speed skating champion Wang Meng and men’s freestyle aerial skier Han Xiaopeng, who also won gold in Turin.
China’s men’s and women’s curling teams will appear at a winter Olympics for the first time, and its women’s ice hockey team returns after missing the 2006 event.
“The participation of those team events is of great significance for the whole delegation,” the official China Daily newspaper quoted Zhao as saying Thursday.
He said China’s winter Olympic athletes still had a long way to go to reach the level of the summer Olympians, who topped the medals table at the 2008 games in Beijing.
“We started taking part in winter sports much later and we faced great obstacles,” Zhao said.
“We are working hard on narrowing the gap between China’s winter and summer sports,” he said.
The Chinese athletes for Vancouver have an average age of just over 24 and about two-thirds of them will make their Winter Olympic debuts there.
The team includes figure-skating pair Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo, who have returned to competition to take part in their fourth winter Olympics.
“The only reason for our coming back is to win the Olympic gold,” said Zhao, 37, who is the oldest athlete in the team.
“It will be our last Winter Olympics, so we will try our best,” Zhao was quoted as saying.
Women’s short-track speed skater Yang Yang won China’s first two winter Olympic golds in Salt Lake City in 2002.
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