He was China’s first-ever Olympic skeleton entrant four years ago, became the country’s only IBSF World Cup gold medallist last November, and is ranked 12th in the world – yet Geng Wenqiang was left out of the Beijing 2022 Games roster. Instead, teammates Yan Wengang and Chen Wenhao took up China’s two men’s skeleton spots. Though the pair are among the mainland’s best, Yan and Chen finished eighth and 12th, respectively, in the same event Geng won his historic gold. But what was the reason for the shock omission? Officials reportedly said it was the 26-year-old’s “suitability” for the Beijing course after holding internal Olympic trials last month. Some Chinese netizens think otherwise, with questions raised over the “politics” of the Olympics selection process. To rub salt into the wounds, Geng was supposed to be one of the poster boys for China’s Winter Olympics push . Not only was he proof China could win medals even in the most niche of winter sports, but Geng was the product of the Winter Sports Management Centre’s initiative to unearth, transfer and develop existing athletes. Here’s what you need to know about Inner Mongolia native Geng, who in the span of seven years was convinced to abandon his fledgling long jump career, finished 13th on his Olympic debut at the Pyeongchang Games, and won a world title, before having the rug pulled out from underneath him. Biography Geng Wenqiang was born on September 11, 1995, in a village in Tongliao, Inner Mongolia. Built with natural athletic flair, he took up track-and-field in school before specialising in the long jump. It did not take long for him to be identified by the autonomous region’s representative team coaches. Majoring in physical education while training as a professional, Geng broke the Inner Mongolia long jump record at the regional Universiade event in 2015, the same year Beijing won its 2022 Winter Olympics bid. Winter Olympics: what is skeleton? Just as the then-20-year-old was finding his stride, Geng was tabbed by the national skeleton team. Without any knowledge of the discipline, he was whisked away from the sandpits and begun training in skeleton powerhouse countries Canada and Germany. He won his first international medal at an invitational in Switzerland a year later, before helping China make a name at the Intercontinental Cup in 2017. Geng’s progress in the sport was nothing short of remarkable. In three years, he not only reached the Pyeongchang Games, but held his own and set up a perfect runway for Beijing 2022. After Pyeongchang, Geng impressed again at the European and North America Cups, won China’s first medal at a World Cup with a bronze in France in 2020, and clinched its first World Cup gold in Austria last year in an unprecedented three-way tie with Great Britain’s Matt Weston and Germany’s Christopher Grotheer. With state media gushing over “the man who became a world champion in seven years”, Geng was considered a shoo-in for the home Games. Or so he thought. ‘Beijing 2022 has always been my dream’ “I read [the comments] today and I’m really touched. Thanks for all your concerns,” Geng wrote on Weibo after learning he did not make China’s skeleton team on January 27. “The growth of China’s skeleton goes in hand with the joint efforts of everyone in our team. The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics has always been my dream, and I have been working hard for this dream for four years. “Although it’s a pity that I was not selected, I sincerely hope that we can achieve good results at the Games. Please pay more attention to our skeleton riders. Let’s go!” Rumours circulated of Geng being outshone during internal Olympic selection trials, but fans were shocked at the idea he could not hack the newly built 1,975m National Sliding Centre in Yanqing. Two days later, the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection – tasked with enforcing regulations and combating corruption – published an explanation for Geng’s omission with skeleton head coach Sun Fan. That Geng ranked above world No 18 Yan and No 22 Chen did not matter enough, it seemed. Sun said that despite the “international gap” between Geng and the team, the selection was made with full consideration of the “characteristics” and “suitability” required for the “strongest athletes” to succeed specifically on the Beijing tracks, which were also used for the Games’ first test event last month. A historic moment in sliding history! The three-times 🥇🥇🥇golden race at the #BMWIBSF World Cup in #Innsbruck ! @MattWeston02 🇬🇧, Wenqiang Geng🇨🇳 and Christopher Grotheer🇩🇪 pic.twitter.com/QXEQcUQGte — IBSF (@IBSFsliding) November 26, 2021 ‘Leaving home’ Geng has been touted as China’s best example of a “半路出家” – banluchujia – athlete. The phrase was originally used to refer to aspiring monks leaving home, but has since extended to address those who abruptly change careers. Crossing over from long jump to skeleton was not easy – it is called the ‘Formula 1 of winter sports’ for a reason – but Geng eventually fell in love with the thrill. “I was actually very scared and nervous when I first started training,” he told Xinmin News, later telling the Beijing Review that “my anxiety would build up every day – I couldn’t sleep very well, either”. “I felt I couldn’t control the skeleton, but after getting used to it, I found it’s actually not that scary. It’s very exciting and not as dangerous as you think,” he added. Other notable crossovers include women’s rider Li Yuxi of Sichuan, a former sprinter who after seven years of training won skeleton gold at the European Cup in Norway last year. Li did not make the Olympic roster, losing out to Zhao Dan and Lin Huiyang. Zhao, a 19-year-old from Inner Mongolia who finished seventh in the 2020 Youth Olympics and is ranked No 26 in the world, was China’s flag-bearer at the opening ceremony . Meanwhile, former endurance skier and fellow Inner Mongolian, Fan Duoyao, was drafted into the national luge team with seven others. He has become a familiar Luge World Cup entrant and is considered a dark horse in Beijing. ‘Red tape’ The mainland government’s sports arm started urgently recruiting world-class winter sports coaches from overseas in 2015, including former Great Britain skeleton coach Andy Schmidt, and then Canadian Olympic silver-medallist and two-time world champion rider Jeff Pain. There was no professional track at the time, so much of the group’s training was conducted overseas. Regardless, the aim was for Olympic gold by 2022. “We’ve been told it’s gold or nothing. The other medals are irrelevant ,” Pain said to the Associated Press, describing his remit four years out. “But it’s not just about putting on a pair of shoes and running fast. You have to be able to bend over, grab a sled, run as fast as you can, dive on it and get to the bottom – without dying. “My initial thought when I took this job was: ‘Oh my gosh, China has got 1.3 billion people. Let me look at 30,000 of them, and from that we’ll pick 50, and from that we’ll find 10 unbelievably good ones.’ “They googled ‘skeleton’ to see what it was. A couple of the kids I’ve got on my team had never seen snow, because they are from southern China.” Pain, who reportedly left for the Austrian set-up in 2019 because he did not want to live in China, also lamented the sluggish bureaucratic process which reportedly caused riders to miss some Pyeongchang qualifiers. “So much red tape,” he said in 2018. “The question is: Will they figure it out fast enough? Will they let the experts, i.e. the foreign coaches that they hire – myself being one of those – will they let us have the reins, the control that we need to push things forward as fast they need to be pushed? So far, we haven’t been allowed to do much of anything.”