Round-up: National Games Highlight Booming Chinese Sports

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, November 25, 2001

Round-up: National Games Highlight Booming Chinese Sports

China's Ninth National Games have broguth Chinese sports into the limelight nationwide, following Chinese capital Beijing's successful Olympic bid last July for the right to host the 2008 Olympic Games.

The national games are to be officially closed Sunday evening.

Li Furong, Vice-minister of the State General Administration of Sports, praised the games staged by south China's Guangdong Province "a high-level parade of the vitality of the country's competitive sports" and said the event "has written a new page in the national games history".

During the 13-day the national games starting from November 11, a total of seven world records, nine Asian records and 37 national records were bettered, in weightlifting, cycling, swimming and track and field events.

The games also witness Chinese athletes' caliber in their traditional sports of table tennis, badminton, gymnastics and diving, which had earned China 16 Olympic gold medals in Sydney last year.

To guarantee justice and quality of the event, the national sports authorities and the games organizers had taken tough measures in the fight against doping.

Blood tests for detecting performance-enhancing EPO, were adopted for the first time in the national games. Additionally, the post-event sampling is backed up by out-of-event tests during the games.

At the end of the 13-day event, hosts Guangdong Province topped the medal table with a total of 69.5 gold medals, followed by northeast China's Liaoning Province with 41 and Chinese Army with 33 golds for the third place.

Shanghai, hosts of the previous games in 1997, who won the top spot at the games final medal tally with 42 golds, finished fourth this time with 29.5 golds.

Compare with the Shanghai games four years ago, Guangdong earned 45 more golds while the former Shanghai's gold medal haul was reduced by 12.5. A funny coincidence that both hosts were invigorated to a top position raised a question to all. Why could nthe hosts boost for so big an advantage and will Jiangsu Province, hosts of the next national games, become the overall winners in four years?

Guangdong provincial sports chief Dong Liangtian told Xinhua that nothing but hard work and enough preparation of four years had finally resulted in all these victories. He believed that the games did help raise the overall sports standard to a higher levelin the southern Chinese province.

While Kong Qingpeng, sports chief of Jiangsu Province, claimed they will try their best to develop sports. However he refused totarget his provincial delegation be the overall games champions four years later.

The 13-day national games here, which is second only to Olympics in status for Chinese athletes, is also believed to serveas a parade of Chinese hopefuls for the Athens Olympics.

Weightlifting, as the Chinese traditional strong event, is still the most record-productive sport during the games, with all the seven world records surpassed. Chinese women's weightlifters once again proved their capability of a world caliber. However, their male teammates face a shortage of young talents, as Olympic and world championships veterans remain as the backbone.

Diving is undoubtedly the most attractive event, with a world- class field including some 20 world and Olympic champions. Described as "even more difficult than at the Olympics to win," the event saw the retirement of China's "diving queen" Fu Mingxia and Xiong Ni. A much matured generation of youngsters as Guo Jingjing, Tian Liang and Li Na are seen on the way to be the leaders in their respective specialty events. There are worries, however, in the sport as a lack of promising new blood is troubling both women's and men's springboards events.

Chinese swimming was deemed by some optimistic Chinese media as having got out of the bottom by pocketing two golds from this year's world championships in Fukuoka. The week-long national games competition saw six world's best this year, three world's second fastest and three third-ranked performance produced in the pool. However, Chinese swimming still needs to convince the world of a resurgence rather than a start of a maturing process.

"It's not the time to celebrate," warned Zhao Ge, head coach of the national swimming team.

Badminton, table tennis and gymnastics all demonstrated a top- flight performance. China still dominates the sport, in face of an increasing challenge from others. Three years seem to be enough but Chinese head coach Li Yongbo declined to predict a high- profile Chinese performance at the 2004 and 2008 Olympic Games, in Athens and back in Beijing.

However, athletics, the medal-rich sport sent off an alarming signal that the gap with world-class level is widening. Asian records were bettered in only three out of the 47 events, namely, in women's 20 kilometer walk, women's hammer and women's triple jump. None of the results could threaten the world marks. Liaoning, the most successful team in the sport here, dominated by bagging 10 gold medals, nine of which were won by athletes led by famed coach Ma Junran. But few of the results were impressive enough to match with the first generation of the "Ma's Army", which used to lead the women's middle-and long-distance running in the world.

At the end of China's first major sporting event in the new century, Chinese sports officials could boost confidently with a promising future, despite of worries for some individual sports.

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