Followings are China's top 10 sports stories of 1999, selected by the China Daily sports editors and writers.

1. China finished second to the US in the women's World Cup soccer tournament held June 17-July 10 in the United States. It was China's best World Cup achievement in history.

2. The Chinese National Men's Soccer Team failed to qualify for the Sydney Olympic Games with a poor 1-1-2 record after matches against South Korea and Bahrain in the Asian qualifiers. The defeats led to the sacking of English head coach Bobby Houghton.

3. The Chinese Olympic Committee approved Beijing's application to bid for hosting the 2008 Olympic Summer Games. The Beijing Olympic Bid Committee was formed in September, five months after Mayor Liu Qi formally presented the capital's bid report to Juan Antonio Samaranch, president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), at the IOC's Lausanne-based headquarters.

4. China swept all five individual gold medals at the 45th World Table Tennis Championships in August in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, for their third clean sweep of individual titles in the tournament's history.

5. Liu Hongyu claimed the women's 20-km walk title at the World Athletics Championships in August at Seville, Spain. It was China's first world championship title since Chinese coach Ma Junren led his women runners to four gold medals at the 1993 championships in Stuttgart, Germany.

6. Chinese gymnasts achieved a historic feat of four gold medals, in women's balance beam and men's rings, vault and team events, in the 34th World Championships in Tianjin in October.

7. Xie Jun won the women's World Chess Championship, beating Russian Alisa Gallamova 8.5-6.5 in a 15-round contest. This is Xie's third world championship victory, following her 1991 triumph and a successful title defence two years later.

8. Former Chinese gymnast Li Ning joined 24 other athletes from around the world in May, as one the Athletes of the Century named by the International Sporting Press Association.

9. Shandong Luneng Taishan became the first soccer club to hit a league and FA Cup double in China's professional league. It was the third championship team in the country's six-year history of professional League, after four-time winners Dalian Wanda and one-time champion Shanghai Shenhua. Defending champions Wanda finished a disappointing ninth this season.

10. China's sixth National Games of Traditional Sports for Minority Nationalities were held at Lhasa in August and in Beijing in September. The Tibet Autonomous Region played host to the national games for the first time. A field of 8,500 athletes from 34 delegations from around the country competed in 13 medal events.