Beijing 2022: can China’s athletes improve on 9 medals they won at Pyeongchang Winter Olympics?
- China will look to channel incredible performance on home soil from 2008 Summer Games, where they took home an astonishing 100 medals
- Aerial skiing and short-track speedskating look to be the team’s best bet to better their outing from 2018 Winter Games in South Korea
At the 2008 Summer Olympics, China’s athletes showed the fruits of their sporting labour when they won an unprecedented 100 medals, 48 of them gold.
After being awarded the Games in Beijing in 2001, the country set about undertaking a massive effort to produce world calibre athletes in virtually every sport on the docket. The move paid off and now fans around the world are wondering if they can repeat the feat next month.
China’s medal tally 14 years ago was equally impressive because in 2004 in Athens they only won 64 medals, 32 of them gold.
China has secured a maximum quota of 10 athletes, five men and five women, in the speed skating discipline across nine events, including the newly added mixed relay, and has put on a number of compelling performances in races leading up to Beijing 2022.
Wu qualified after winning one of the four World Cup legs in 2021, along with men’s teammate Ren Ziwei, who is also a potential medal contender. Four years ago the Chinese speed skaters captured two silvers and a bronze.
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Aerial skiing and snowboarding could be events where China adds additional medals given their racers have been preparing on the slopes that will be used for the Games.
Then of course there is Chinese freestyle ski star Eileen Gu, who will have the weight of the nation on her shoulders as she shoots for three medals.
Gu became the first X Games rookie to take medals in three events on her debut, and the first free skier to win multiple world titles in a single year. At just 18 she will try to medal and take gold in big air, half-pipe and slopestyle.
In 2018 China grabbed three medals, but no golds, in freestyle skiing, so the chances of them building on that tally look strong.
When it comes to figure skating, Sui Wenjing and Han Cong will expect to build on their silver medal from 2018, which was just 0.43 points from gold in South Korea. The two-time world champions took the Grand Prix of Figure Skating series in Canada and Italy during the 2021-22 season, with fellow Chinese figure skating pairs team Peng Cheng and Jin Yang finishing second in Italy.
In Korea, China only grabbed one medal in figure skating, but that is a number that could go up given the top five pairs in the global rankings are either Chinese or Russian. There is also Jin Boyang, who came fourth in Pyeongchang, and could find his way onto the podium if he has a stand-out performance.
More than the 80 competitors across 12 disciplines that China sent to South Korea are expected to qualify this time around, and the squad has a number of dark horse contenders who could well benefit from competing at home.
One of those athletes is Geng Wenqiang, who took up skeleton first in 2015, and won China’s first World Cup title in Austria in November.
