The Chinese archery team aims to win a gold medal at the 14th Asian Games, said a top Chinese archery official.
"Eight Chinese archers will take part in the Asian Games," saidChinese Shooting and Archery Association president Zhou Yuan. "Allare young and less experienced, with an average age of only 22. And none of them have competed in the Asian Games."
Four archery gold medals are at stake in the Busan Games. They come from women's recurve individual, women recurve team, men recurve individual and men recurve team.
South Korea will be a mountain too high for China to surmount. The consistent winners in world archery have kept nearly all worldrecords and swept all the four golds at the Bangkok Asian Games.
South Korea has a tradition that all schools and universities take arrow-shooting training courses as compulsory. About half a million South Koreans are archery amateurs.
According to reports, South Korea mapped out a 80-gold target at this games. And all the archery golds have been counted under South Korean names.
Under rules which prevent the same team from sweeping the top three places in any one event, at least one medal will go to otherteam.
At last Asian Games, China won one silver and two bronzes in archery. Chinese archery chief Zhou hopes that the team could achieve better result in Busan than the last time.
The Chinese team has made great process since South Korean coach Yang Cang-hun took the helm last July.
The Chinese women won the team title at the World Outdoor Target Archery championships last September, and the men's team got the bronze.
Zhang Juanjuan, a 21-year-old women archer from Shandong Province, got the first place in individual competition in last year's Asian Archery Championships.
The Chinese Shooting and Archery Association has extended the contract with Yang to four years, expecting the former world champion to make China's gold dream come true.