Year Ahead for Chinese Sport - Big Goals, Big Challenges

(ATR) Chinese sports officials reveal the country’s goal at the London Games is to take top position on the overall medals tally.

Liu Peng, director of the General Administration of Sport of China, stated at Tuesday’s annual meeting that Chinese athletes performed well enough in 2011 to realize his dream in 2012.

"We’ve won more gold and total medals at Olympic sports than any other countries this year," he said.

On latest count, China produced 138 world champions in 2011 with four athletes and one team setting a combined eight world records.

For comparison, China narrowly lost out to USA in overall medals (100 to 110) at the 2008 Beijing Olympics but easily topped Team USA (51 to 36) when ordering by IOC convention of gold medals won.

2011 in Review

The deputy secretary general of the Chinese Olympic Committee tells Around the Rings that 2011 was an exceptional year for athletes from all sorts of sports.

"Generally speaking, we have maintained our advantages in the sports that Chinese athletes are traditionally good at," says Cai Jiadong.

"We swept all world championships events in diving, table tennis and badminton as well as trampoline. Our artistic gymnastics team won 12 medals at Tokyo’s world championships, including four gold, and our weightlifting team also claimed six gold in Olympic events."

Cai tells ATR he’s also satisfied with the breakthroughs of athletes in a number of sports not traditionally with the Chinese such as track and field, swimming, tennis, fencing, women’s water polo and synchronized swimming.

"We won one gold in total from these basic sports in Beijing, but [in 2011] our swimming team claimed five gold and track and field also won four medals in Daegu, including one gold. Their improvement after Beijing is clear," he says.

Cai predicts China will send 400 athletes from between 22 and 24 sports to London 2012, about on par with the team sent to Athens 2004.

"This team will surelybe smaller than Beijing’s because we took some advantages as hosts and could qualify automatically at some sports," he explains.

To date, 277 athletes from China have qualified for 159 events spread across 18 sports including weightlifting, gymnastics, diving, synchronized swimming, modern pentathlon, basketball, table tennis and others.

Challenges Ahead for London

According to Cai, the majority of gold medals up for grabs by Chinese athletes at the 2012 Olympics still come from six key sports: table tennis, badminton, gymnastics, diving, shooting and weightlifting.

In some cases, he predicts, there’s simply no more room for improvement.

"Taking diving as an example, we swept all gold from Shanghai this year, and it is unlikely for us to repeat the same result in London. We won nine gold medals at gymnastics in Beijing, and it is impossible to do the same again next year," he tells ATR.

"Some sports in which we did well in Beijing such as sailing, rowing, canoeing, cycling and archery have not performed well these last two years. Therefore, we need some breakthroughs from other sports in order to achieve a better result. "

Cai also admits that Team China will face more challenges in London than ever before as well as threats from other sports giants.

"The overall level of USA, Great Britain and Russia teams has seen a dramatic improvement after Beijing since they have been receiving lots of support from governments and civil societies," he says.

"For instance, Team USA and Team Russia claimed 27 gold and nine gold from track and field and swimming this year, respectively, whereas we have only won 6. The gap between us and them at their advantage sports is wider, and they will be even better after serious preparation next year. Hence, the competition for next year will be extremely intense."

Written and reported in Beijing by Tencent's Norman Li

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