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China Guns for Men's Team Gold at Sydney Olympics
The all-conquering Chinese men's gymnasts are going all out to bring home the elusive Olympics team's gold in Sydney next month.
China captured their fourth consecutive men's world championship last year in Tianjin with a massive margin and now the only missing piece of jigsaw in the picture of their world supremacy is the Olympics title that has been dominated by the Russians for over a decade.
China have entered the Olympics twice as team world champions but have never won a team Olympic gold.
The nation's sports officials have set a task of up to three Olympic gold medals for the gymnastics team, and obviously the trophy they desire most is from the men's team event.
Believing to possess a "best ever men's team in the China's gymnastics history", head coach Huang Yubin says he is full of confidence to lead his men to the ultimate Olympics glory.
"We're going very well in the training and I have no doubt China is the top favourite in the men's team event," Huang says.
While Huang is blessed with an enviable pool of young talents on their prime time to choose from, his arch rivals Russia are struggling to form a well-balanced effort to defend their title with only half of the six-man team on the world level and the other half ways behind.
Top gymnastics official Zhang Jian believes the men's team's gold would be a safe bet. "The lads are on the peak; they're burning with the desire to win and their spirits are soaring, " he says. "The timing is just perfect. "It is believed China has decided five of their six-man team, with 19-year-old vault world champion Li Xiaopeng leading the pack which also includes pommel horse specialist Xing Aowei and three all-around gymnasts Huang Xu,Yang Wei and Lu Yufu.
The remaining berth in the team is to be decided between Dong Zhen, who clinched the rings world title in hometown Tianjin last year, and Xiao Junfeng, who hit the form earlier this year with four vault gold medals in a row at the World Cup Grand Prix.
Besides men's team's event, China are able to strike gold in other eight events at Sydney Olympics, Zhang reveals. They're men's all-around, vault, rings, parallel bars, pommel horse, floor and women's uneven bars and balance beam.
The prestigious men's individual all-around title, which was snatched by Li Xiaoshuang four years ago at Atlanta, would prove to be a tough battlefield of no more than ten gymnasts mainly from China, Japan, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Romania.
The Chinese challenge in the event lie in a joint force of Xing Aowei, Yang Wei, Huang Xu and Lu Yufu. They can expect a formidable rivalry in the shape of Belarus veteran Ivan Ivankov and three top Russians Alexei Nemov, Alexei Bondarenko and world champion Nikolay Krukov.
In the men's vault event, China will depend on a tandem of world champion Li Xiaopeng and World Cup winner Xiao Junfeng. Also, Li is eager to repeat his gold medal-winning performance in the parallel bars event of the 1997 worlds and is a major contender for the floor title.
China will be looking at world silver medallist Xing Aowei for the pommel horse gold and world champion Dong Zhen for the rings.
The Chinese women's gymnasts pale in comparison with the men's, with only two realistic chances of reaching the top podium in Sydney.
Huang Mandan and Ling Jie, silver and bronze medallist at last year's worlds respectively, will be trying to uproot Russia's Olympic defending champion Svetlana Khorkina from the uneven bars championship. The Russian heartthrob has never fumbled in the event of any major competitions since the 1995 world championships.
Ling will also have a shot at the balance beam event in Sydney, but the 18-year-old world champion will be finding Khorkina waiting there again, alongside women's all-around world champion Maria Olaru of Romania.
The gymnastics delegation has never returned home empty handed since China resumed their Olympics entry in the 1984 Los Angeles Games. Things seem to be no different this time in Sydney.
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