Home>>Sports
Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, November 17, 2001

Chinese Women Gymnastics Regressing, Criticizes Former National Coach

The standard of Chinese women's gymnastics had being regressing, a veteran Chinese gymnastics coach said Saturday in Guangzhou.


PRINT IT DISCUSS IT CHINESE SEND TO FRIENDS


The standard of Chinese women's gymnastics had being regressing, a veteran Chinese gymnastics coach said Saturday in Guangzhou.

Qian Kui, former head coach of the Chinese women's national team, criticized that on the uneven bars, which had been one of China's traditionally advantageous apparatus events, there had been no flash points so far during the on-going national games. " There's nothing unique of our own and no new formation had been performed as far as I had seen," he said.

There had been such world-class stars as Olympic champion Ma Yanhong and Lu Li and Bi Wenjing, out of what overseas press had described as China's production line of sports stars.

The women gymnasts' movements including the twisting ones were not up to the standard and regulations during the competition. " No wonder they failed to be awarded with high marks," Qian said.

"The situation in the balance beam event was better but some veteran athletes made serious errors during the execution," said the senior coach, who is here to survey the week-long gymnastics competition starting on Monday.

Qian pointed the Chinese men's team had done better than their female teammates in terms of adapting themselves to the changes brought about by the new rules. The revolutionary rule changes had been adopted since last year's Sydney Olympics by the sport's world governing body the International Gymnastics Federation.

Qian's view-point was echoed by China's former world and Olympic champion gymnast Li Ning, who, nick-named as "Chinese prince of gymnastics", is the chief judge of the national games competitions here. The overall capability, qualify and rhythm of the women athletes on the uneven bars here were no longer of world 's top class, Li said.

Six out of the eight finalists of he event had only managed to score somewhere around 9.1s during the qualification rounds. The full mark is 10 points.

So far as the athletes are concerned, the new rules are even more demanding, Li said. For floor exercises, we could see most women athletes turn out to concoct their base points and degrees of difficulty by resorting to more somersaults rather than a formation with dancing movements. The star gymnast-turned- businessman urged practical efforts be made to turn the trend that the aesthetic sector of the sport turned out to be missing.




    Advanced

FIG Reform Adds Spice to Chinese Gymnastics



>> Full Coverage