China: Gold winners and underdogs - hosts with significantly better medal records than 2018

Created: 02/18/2022, 12:36 p.m

By: Christiane Kuehl

China's new teenage star: 17-year-old Su Yiming celebrates his Olympic victory in the Big Air snowboard. © Imago/Kyodo News

China has won significantly more medals at the home Winter Games than in Pyeongchang in 2018.

But the country still has a long way to go when it comes to traditional winter sports.

Beijing/Munich — Eileen Gu was unbeatable in her prime discipline.

On Friday morning, China's ski freestyle prodigy took gold in the halfpipe by a wide margin.

In icy cold and wind gusts of up to 20 kilometers per hour, you manage to make high jumps, safe landings and perfect grabs on your skis in every run.

"Let's Go!" the athlete with American roots yelled into the camera after taking the lead in the first round.

Her second pass was the best;

In the end, Gu was well ahead of the Canadian duo of Pyeongchang Olympic champion Cassie Sharpe (90.75) and vice world champion Rachael Karker (87.25) with 95.25 points.

The 18-year-old is China's most successful athlete at the Olympic Winter Games in her own country.

It was the fourteenth medal for host country China, which moved up to fourth in Friday's medal table.

The provisional balance was eight times gold, four times silver and two bronzes.

It was clear to everyone that China could not repeat the coup of the Summer Games in Beijing in 2008.

Back then, it won more medals than any other country.

Nevertheless, the medal haul from Beijing is a real success for the hosts.

Because at the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, Korea, China only won nine medals and ended up 16th in the national ranking.

The only gold was won by Wu Dajing on the 500-meter short track, skating in a tight loop, on the same track as his opponents.

China's sports officials really wanted to top these expansions.

The second goal: send an athlete to the race in all disciplines.

China made enormous efforts for this - especially in the traditional winter sports, which have no tradition in the country.

Beijing hired renowned foreign coaches and, starting in 2018, sent dozens of promising athletes to the best training centers in Norway, Austria or Finland.

Most of these Winter Olympians in Spe had previously played very different sports, from kayaking to hurdles. 

In the end, Team China actually competed almost everywhere — even in team ski jumping, where four men fit for large hills were needed.

But China's athletes got medals and good placements, especially where they were always good.

In short track and freestyle.

The ski freestyle team around superstar Eileen Gu and the aerials specialists alone won five of these medals.

Four more were short track.

Only four others count as surprises: bronze in skeleton, gold in men's 500m speed skating and gold and silver for young snowboarder Su Yiming. 

China's young trend athletes: Eileen Gu and Su Yiming

17-year-old Su became the teen superstars of these games alongside Chinese-American freestyle ace Eileen Gu.

After the two won Olympics, storms of enthusiasm swept through Chinese social media.

And so the most popular athletes in the country are active in those disciplines that are dominated by freedom-loving and unconventional athletes.

This is exactly what had fascinated Eileen Gu since she was a child in the USA.

17-year-old Su is also not a typical squad athlete, but looks cool and does acting as a hobby.

Nevertheless, he is one of the few winter sports athletes in China who have been practicing their sport since childhood: Su stood on a snowboard for the first time at the age of four.

He dreamed of this moment every night, Su said after his Olympic victory in the Big Air discipline,

which he celebrated extensively in the outlet — also embraced by his older rivals, who were usually a head taller.

In the scene, he is seen as disciplined and relaxed at the same time - and as a future superstar.

Born in California to a Chinese mother and US father, Eileen Gu became a pre-game star, hailed for her decision to compete for China.

And the "snow princess" fulfilled the great hopes that the country had in her: Before her Olympic victory on Friday, she had already won gold in Big Air with breathtaking jumps. She managed silver in slopestyle despite a fall on her second attempt.

But Eileen Gu got bogged down in geopolitics during the games.

By changing the flag in 2019 from the USA to China, she involuntarily entered a political minefield.

In the US, conservatives in particular accuse her of “treason”.

China is celebrating its new gold star Gu.

But there, too, the excitement is mixed with a debate about her unclear citizenship and a little resentment about her privileged life.

Gu always remains silent on the question of whether she kept her US passport, which is actually forbidden in China.

Inexperienced and seemingly aloof statements, for example on Internet censorship in China, repeatedly triggered small debates on the Internet.

But Gu seems to have coped well with the hostilities.

"It was two weeks with the most intense ups and downs I've ever experienced,"

said Gu on Friday after her second Olympic victory.

"My life has changed forever."

The Experienced: China's Aerials Team

China's ski freestyle isn't all Eileen Gu, though.

For years, the People's Republic has been successful in the aerials, also known as ski jumping.

The athletes catapult themselves from a ski jump with the take-off surface pointing almost vertically upwards to dizzying heights and often land quite hard on the run-out slope after twists, somersaults and other tricks.

It's a spectacular sport, but China's aerials athletes aren't scene icons.

At 31, the two new Olympic champions, Xu Mengtao for women and Qi Guangpu for men, belong to a different generation of athletes.

Both have collected many medals in their long careers, but won Olympic gold for the first time in Beijing.

After her victory, Xu roared her joy in the falling snow for several minutes. 

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In mixed, only teammate Jia Zongyang's crash landing in the final prevented Team China from winning their third Aerials gold.

In the end it was at least silver behind the USA.

Unlucky Jia also fell in the singles and thus lost every chance for a medal.

The 30-year-old won bronze and silver in 2014 and 2018. 

Light and shadow for China in the short track

Two golds, one silver and one bronze, several weaker runs and one disqualification: the record in China's prime discipline is mixed.

For the first time, a mixed relay was an Olympic discipline in Beijing — and this mixed relay won host China on the very first day of competition.

And in a curious way: In the second semi-final, the Chinese had only finished fourth, slipped into the final due to disqualifications for the USA and the Russian athletes.

There the quartet prevailed over Italy and Hungary.

On Monday, Ren Ziwei and Li Wenlong won gold and silver in the men's 1,000 meters.

However, both benefited from a mistake by the Chinese-born Hungarian Sandor Shaolin Liu.

This almost got caught with Ren, both crossed the finish line practically at the same time.

But the Hungarian had just changed lanes illegally and was disqualified.

The women's relay took bronze in the second week of competition. 

Otherwise, the hosts went away empty-handed: Ren Ziwei won his quarter-finals in the 1500m, but was disqualified in the semi-finals due to an irregularity.

And there was trouble related to the mixed gold: Kwak Yoon Gy from the second-placed mixed team from South Korea called China's victory "illegitimate" in the Korean press.

The disqualifications of the Russians and Americans were not right.

Two other allegations weighed more heavily.

A Chinese skater pushed an opponent aside with both hands during the race - and was not disqualified, although it is forbidden to do so.

A video also shows how a Chinese pushes the puck between an opponent's legs to limit the lane.

He then fell.

The Chinese team emphasized afterwards that it was an accident.

On the video, however, it looks more like a conscious movement.

Either way:

China's surprise winners: speed skating and skeleton

In speed skating, China also won gold for the first time in the men's 500 meters with Gao Tingyu's victory.

Gao also set a new Olympic record.

The young speed skater had been one of his country's two flag bearers at the opening ceremony.

In speed skating, China has repeatedly recorded individual successes at past winter games.

Even less likely were successes in the ice channel.

While the German coverage of the men's skeleton race focused on their own gold and silver, China was more interested in third place: Yan Wengang from Tianjin surprisingly took bronze — an important milestone.

The country has never won a medal in skeleton.

In Pyeongchang, the best-placed Chinese participant was 13th in 2018.

In general, Team China played no role in the decisions in the ice track.

There was a notable success at the Olympic premiere of women's monobob: With the clear victory of the world champion Kaillie Humphries from the USA, two Chinese women, Huai Mingming in sixth place and Ying Qing in ninth place, finished in the top ten. 

The losers: No success for China in traditional winter sports

However, the hoped-for breakthrough did not materialize elsewhere.

It will still take years to set up efficient teams in classic sports such as cross-country skiing, ski jumping, tobogganing or alpine skiing, despite the use of experienced foreign coaches.

The biathletes trained by the ex-stars Darja Domratschewa and Ole Einar Björndalen, for example, shot quite well, but ran behind on the cross-country ski run.

No ski jumper or downhill skier reached the second round.

For the games at home, the Olympic principle now applied: Being there is everything.

But it is hardly to be expected that China will be satisfied with this in the long term.