In Norway, China’s Winter Olympics ‘gold-medal factory’ hoped to put young athletes on the podium
- China pledged its athletes will participate in every event at next year’s Winter Olympics and is sending them on intensive training programmes to see it happen
When Zhang Yuanyuan arrived in Norway to train as a cross-country skier for the Winter Olympics, not only had she never skied before, she had never seen snow.
Wrapping up an early morning training session in Meråker, a mountain town with a population of fewer than 3,000 on Norway’s border with Sweden, Zhang says she is “very happy” with the progress she has made in the two years since she slipped on 4cm-wide racing skis for the first time, and wants to use her time in Norway to “get better and better”.
Back home, the Chinese government is banking on young athletes like Zhang to do just that. And to do it fast.
At the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, China brought home more medals than any other nation. But in the last winter games, in South Korea, it claimed only a single gold. The first city to host both the summer and winter games, Beijing is adopting the same bluster as last time around. It has gone beyond the expected investment in stadiums and infrastructure – building 650 ice-skating rinks and 800 ski resorts by 2022 – and pledged that Chinese athletes will participate in all 109 events, a tall order for a country that did not qualify for half of them at Pyeongchang.
“We understand this is not going to be easy,” said sports minister Guo Zhongwen after announcing the goal of full participation at the National Congress of the Communist Party in 2018, “but we want to show our determination for a full presence in the Beijing Games. We feel huge pressure for this mission.”