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Prologue already visible for China at 2008 Olympics (2) |
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13:42, December 25, 2007 |
China stacked its 407-strong team at Athens with young athletes to groom future champions, and the squad still easily surpassed its modest goal of 20 golds, taking a best ever 32 golds for an unprecedented second place in the medal count, only three golds shy of the United States.
The gold medals came not only in the traditional Chinese domains of table tennis, badminton, gymnastics and diving but also in men's track and women's tennis.
Powerhouse Russia had to settle for third with 27 golds.
With the nation's 2008 expectations heaping high on the athletes' shoulders, China's sports officials chose to play low key.
"The United States got 31 gold medals from track and field and swimming world championships this year, showing their prowess in those two biggest storehouses, where China has little hope of gold medals except for Liu Xiang's 110m hurdles," SSAC vice director Cui Dalin said in November.
"As for Russia, they had won gold medals in 64 sports in the past three years, which is a lot more than we did."
The exact number of gold medals Chinese athletes had won in 2007 has yet to be to talled, but the advantages are still maintained in table tennis, badminton, diving, shooting, gymnastics and weightlifting, which earned a total of 20 golds for China three years ago.
The Chinese athletes failed again to enjoy sparkling success in their weakest sports, namely track and field, swimming and aquatics.
These sports were listed in the "119 Project" -- an initiative launched by the SSAC after the Sydney Olympics, referring to 119 gold medals from the three sports, accounting for one-third of the total gold medals (The project maintains the same name despite the fact that for 2008 the number has risen to 122).
Chinese swimmers came back home without a single gold from the Melbourne world championships in March while hurdler Liu was the only gold medalist from China at the athletics world championships in Japan, casting a shadow over the preparations for these bonanza sports.
"We have been backward in these sports which have been dominated by the United States for a long time, and our training methods and levels are below bar. We have indeed put in much effort but it did not come to fruition," said Cui, suggesting the project may have fallen short of expectations.
"We think the United States and Russia will maintain pole position in next year's Olympics, and China will be competing to dominate second-tier medal winning nations," he added.
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