Following is the top 10 Chinese sports news in 2004 selected by the Xinhua News Agency:

1. Lenovo, the country's largest computer maker, became the country's first ever company to join the Olympic Partner Program, or TOP on March 26. It joins an elite business club of Olympic sponsors, which includes Coca-Cola, Kodak, McDonald's, Panasonic, Samsung and General Electric.

2. China won the men's team badminton event Thomas Cup in Malaysia in May for the first time in 12 years. Their women's team retained the Uber Cup for the fourth successive time.

3. Guangzhou, the only bidder for the 2010 Asian Games, was awarded to host the quadrennial event by the Asian Olympic Confederation. It will become only the second Chinese city after Beijing to host so big an international sports event.

4. China finished second in the medal standings in the Athens Olympic Games by winning 32 gold medals, their best feat in the Olympic history. Their Paralympic delegation also made history by topping the medal table by winning 63 gold medals.

5. Chinese athletes made historic breakthroughs in some events which have long been dominated by western athletes. They won gold medals in the events of men's 110m hurdles, women's tennis doubles, women's wrestling and men's canoeing at the Athens Olympic Games.

6. The Olympic flag was passed on to Beijing mayor Wang Qishan in the closing ceremony of the Athens Olympic Games, which signaled the world's attention has turned to the Chinese capital in the next four years.

Beijing Olympics Organizers have announced to postponed their completion date of all venues for the Games by one year to 2007. They also changed some designs of the Olympic Stadium to cut costs.

7. Shanghai became the first Chinese city to host the Formula One world championships on September 24 to 26.

8. Two runners, one college student and the other a retired worker, died in the Beijing international marathon on October 18.

9. China's inaugural premier soccer league plunged into the verge of collapse after being hit by match fixing and gambling. Seven clubs have pressed the Chinese Football Association for reforms and threatened to quit the league.

Chinese men's national team was eliminated from the 2006 World Cup qualifying campaign and their women's team suffered a humiliating 8-0 defeat to world champion Germany in the Athens Olympic Games.

10. Several people were found guilty to have manipulated the scratch-and-win sports lottery in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province. And they were sentenced to imprisonment by the a local court late this year. The real lottery top prize winner Liu Liang finally received the top prize, a BMW car and 120,000 yuan in cash, and accepted the sincere apologies from local sports authorities.

Source: Xinhua