Ma Junren's Road to Sydney Hits the Right Track

Who will lead Ma's army into the Sydney Olympics? The question was settled last month when Ma Junren, China's maverick track coach, helped four members of his team win contests at Olympic warm-up events in Europe.

Last month, Ma made his first international appearance since the 1998 World Junior Championships when he attended the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) Golden League and Grand Prix in Paris and Greece. His team won one gold and two silver medals.

After steering his team to three gold medals with record performances at the 1998 event, Ma went into obscurity and left a vacuum in Chinese women's distance running.

But for Ma, who doesn't have an Olympic gold medal in his collection, the appeal of the games was so big he decided to come back to train the team late last year.

Afterwards, the team showed better form. They dominated the Chinese Olympic qualifiers in Jinzhou in June, taking all the medals in women's 1,500m, 5,000m and 10,000m. As well as these athletes, Ma also has other talented runners available, so he could send two distance running teams to Sydney if he wanted.

Now the world is holding its breath to see if the coach can achieve something similar to what happened at the 1993 Stuttgart World Championships when his former star runners unexpectedly won three golds.

The recent outings in Europe suggests Ma's new runners will be real gold contenders in Sydney.

Dong Yanmei, winner of 3,000m in Greece is considered the top hopeful.

She also won a silver in Paris in the 5,000m race and her times in the two events are among the five best in the world this year.

Li Jingnan, who joined the team last year, is another runner Ma expects to win an Olympic medal.

She was the 1,500m silver medallist in Paris.

The other two runners who recently went to Europe, Yin Lili, Ma's reported favourite, and Lan Lixin, world junior 10,000m record holder, need to be tested further before their Olympic tasks.

Li Ji, a 10,000m specialist, is another one on Ma's list as a possible medal winner.

"We saw so many good runners on our European trip that winning a gold will be hard for us," said Ma.

"We got to know our position in the world on that trip."

Now Ma and his runners are making their last preparations on a plateau in Yunnan Province, a training camp where he coached his past winners.



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