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22nd July, 2008
BEIJING: China is on the brink of becoming the most dominant sporting power in the world, with expectations running high that they will bounce the United States from the top of the Olympic medal table.
At Athens four years ago, China finished with 32 gold, 17 silver and 14 bronze medals to place second behind the United States.
In the drive to beat that mark and satisfy nationalist pride, the host nation is expected to field almost 600 athletes in August, up from the 407 it sent to Greece.
While it has a realistic chance of achieving the feat, it is not likely to make waves in blue riband events such as athletics and swimming.
Rather, its hopes of upstaging the United States lie in scooping gold medals from sports where it is traditionally strong, table tennis, badminton, gymnastics and diving.
It will also be aiming to add to the tally in lower profile disciplines such as canoeing, boxing, beach volleyball and synchronized swimming.
Yet Deputy Sports Minister Cui Dalin has been keen to play down expectations of a medals avalanche.
“This is the first Olympics where our athletes are competing at home and they face a whole new competition environment and a whole series of difficulties never encountered before,” he said in the build-up.
“The gap between the Chinese competitors’ performances in swimming and athletics and those for foreign competitors is vast,” he said.
Cui is right about athletics and swimming. Only defending 110m hurdles champion Liu Xiang and London marathon winner Zhou Chunxiu have a realistic chance of seeing the Chinese flag hoisted in honour of a gold medal.
Their hopes of further glory were dented when 10,000m champion Xing Huina, who broke the world record in 2003, lost her battle against chronic injury and pulled out of the Games in May.
Apart from Liu and Zhou, Zhang Wenxiu is seen as an outside chance in the women’s hammer throw after taking bronze at the world athletics championships last year.
For hurdler Liu, the first Chinese man to secure an Olympic athletics gold when he won in Athens, the pressure couldn’t be greater.
Not only is he expected to win, but his hundreds of millions of fans will be looking for him to retake the world record from Cuba’s Dayron Robles.
His coach, Sun Haiping, said it was all or nothing for the superstar athlete.
“Officials from the State General Administration of Sports once told us if Liu could not win a gold in Beijing, all of his previous achievements would become meaningless,” Sun said.
With China’s dismal showing at the National Swimming Championships this year, where just two Asian records were broken, few of the 32 golds up for grabs in the Olympic pool are expected to end up in Chinese hands.
With the United States and Australia set to dominate once again, hopes will hang on Wu Peng, who claimed silver in the 200m butterfly at last year’s world championships.
“We have the confidence to do our best, but we really have no specific event that will be able to produce a gold medal at the Beijing Games,” said head coach Zhang Yadong.
Where China will almost certainly chalk up success is through its paddlers and shuttlers.
China is the dominant table tennis nation and with the likes of men’s world numbers one and two, Wang Hao and Ma Lin, in action, and top-ranked Zhang Yining and Guo Yue on the women’s side, a medal frenzy is almost guaranteed.
Golden couple Lin Dan and Xie Xingfang will carry Chinese hopes on the badminton courts, while the diving team will aim to top their six gold medals from nine medals at Athens.
A sport that China could surprise in is boxing. At the Asian Games in Doha in 2006, they shocked world heavyweights Kazakhstan and Thailand by bagging two gold medals through Zou Shiming (light flyweight) and Hu Qing (lightweight).
They were China’s first top podium finishes since Bai Chongguang won the Asian light-heavyweight title in 1990 and bodes well for August.
Other medal chances should come in women’s weightlifting and shooting.
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