The Chinese short track speed skating national team has started its new four-year Olympic cycle in a powerful fashion after winning two gold medals at the World Cup in Changchun.

The team has already set their gold-medal target on the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games.

"Our skaters have tried their best and their fighting and team spirits are satisfactory," said the newly-appointed coach Li Yan, who came back to coach the team from the US after the Turin Winter Olympic Games earlier this year.

"This competition is just a practice for our team and our aim is the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games 2010. We hope to win as many gold medals as possible four years later."

At the Turin Games, the Chinese short track speed skating team collected two gold, four silver and five bronze medals. The 21-year-old gold medallist Wang Meng has grown to become the new leader of the team, which still lag behind arch-rival South Korea, which gained six gold medals at the Games.

Back from Turin, world champion veterans Yang Yang (A) and Li Jiajun announced their retirement and the young team welcomed its new coach Li in May.

"Since I'm Chinese, when my homeland called me up, the only choice for me is to come back," said Li, who was the head coach of the US short track speed skating team at the Turin Games.

"I'm confident that I could help these good skaters to win back the glory for China."

At the World Cup Changchun stop, Wang led her team-mates Fu Tianyu and Zhu Mile for a medal sweep at the women's 500m race and she overtook Olympic champion and world record holder Jin Sun-yu in the last lap for the 1,000m title.

The skater-cum-coach has been a successful coach overseas taking over the Slovakia national team in 2001 and lifted them to second place in Europe after only half a year. From 2003, she began to train the US national team and was the first person US star skater Apolo Anton Ohno rushed to hug after winning the men's 500m race at the Turin Games.

Returning to China, Li brought back her advanced training methods.

"I always stress the consciousness in the training. This means I always tell the skaters why they are doing what they do to let them understand the training methods well," said Li. "I also tell them to learn to control the race by themselves."

After the first testing for Li's team last week, Li was satisfied with her fellow skaters. "They are all smart in the competitions and implemented the strategies neatly. The Chinese team is going in my way."

Bur Li admitted that the team needs new talents.

"For the women's team, we have advantages in the short distance race but still have big gap with the Koreans in long distance, while after the retirement of Li Jiajun, the men's team lacks a leader now. So we need to find new talents," said Li. "At present, we have found someone that has strong potentials but no outstanding ones. The responsibility of the coach is to fully bring out their latent potentialities. Through years' of efforts, they will make great progress."

Source: China Daily