China's Winter Game Ambitions Heat Up

BEIJING—As the Vancouver Winter Olympics draw to a close, China's sports machine is quietly putting on a clinic in how to climb the medals standings.

China has poured increasing resources in the Winter Games after snagging the most gold medals in the Beijing Summer Olympics two years ago. As of Wednesday, with four days left of Olympics play, it had won eight medals, tied for ninth with Switzerland and Sweden. Four years ago, at the Winter Olympics in Turin, it won 11.

China's Olympic Push

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China's Beixing Wang competes in speed skating.

But four of China's medals so far are gold, double the haul from Turin and its highest total in the Winter Games, and it looks set to continue its effort. By contrast, Canada is considering cutting a similar program after the nation hasn't come close to leading in the overall medal count.

So far, the gold has come mostly in areas where China had been expected to do well: speed skating and freestyle skiing. But it also won gold in figure skating even though the duo of Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo was unranked.

Thursday, the Chinese women's curling team, which was seen as a favorite for gold, lost in the semifinals, though coach Daniel Rafael said the performance was amazing considering that the players were in their 20s, when most teams fielded curlers in their 40s.

"I think they did good for a bunch of 20-year-olds at the Olympics," Mr. Rafael said. "Experience counts."

China's Winter Olympics gains come even as officials say it has just 30 standard-sized skating rinks nationwide and virtually no public participation in other winter sports.

"The Olympics are about changing China's image," says Donnie Pei, a historian of Chinese sports at the Capital Institute of Sports, a college. "We used to be called the 'sick man of Asia,' and now we want to show that we're not as weak as you think."

The government is committed to expanding mass participation. Last year it spent $60 million, raised through a lottery, on public sports, up from $40 million in 2007. An additional $15 million went to pilot projects in rural China, where facilities are especially scarce.

Officials say the spending has more to do with grandeur than ordinary people's physical fitness. Liu Peng, head of the General Administration of Sports in China, said in a recent state-media interview that China has to move from being "a big sporting country" to a "powerful sporting country."

These goals are on display at the Chinese Winter Sports Administrative Center in Beijing. The offices are spartan, but the ambitions huge: to make a country with almost no winter-sporting tradition the rival of the Germanys, Norways and Austrias of the world.

China made its Winter Olympics debut in 1980 at the Lake Placid Games in the U.S., with its best result an 18th-place finish in the women's slalom. The country began to aim at sports where China's strengths could come into play, said the director of the winter-sports center, Zhao Yinggang. That meant spending money on sports like freestyle skiing, snowboarding and speed skating.

"These sports are easier for Chinese athletes to get results in a short time," Mr. Zhao said. "Some of them are similar to summer sports where Chinese athletes are more competitive."

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For example, one of China's top medal prospects is Han Xiaopeng, who won gold at the Turin Games in freestyle-skiing aerials and is due to compete in Vancouver this week. Mr. Han hails from temperate Jiangsu province, which has only one skating rink for its 75 million people. But Mr. Han was an expert tumbler and attended a famous acrobatic-gymnastics sports school in Peixian. At age 13, Mr. Han was recruited into the freestyle-ski team. "He already had skills that could be used," Mr. Zhao said. Chinese athletes are recruited young and given systematic training, he said.

This result-oriented focus helped China win its first winter medals, two silvers in speed skating, at the 1992 games. The real breakthrough took place a decade later, when speed skater Yang Yang won the women's 500- and 1,000-meter events. In Turin, China won two gold, four silver and five bronze medals to finish in ninth place.

As in the Summer Games, China is weaker in team sports, which require a higher number of elite athletes for just one gold medal and are considered relatively inefficient investments. But earlier this week, China won its first women's ice-hockey match in 12 years and finished the tournament in seventh place. This year, China's best shot for team gold might come Friday in an unlikely sport, curling, where the women's team has won the world championship and spent part of the year training in Canada.

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Some question whether geography will hold China back. Most of the country is relatively warm, with little snowfall. Like most of the people in China's winter-sports program, Mr. Zhao, the center's director, hails from the northeast, or Manchuria, the only heavily populated part of the country with winter-like conditions. Although it includes just three of China's 30 provinces and territories, the northeast is still home to 108 million people, more than the combined populations of winter-sporting powers Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Norway.

"We need more of a foundation, but that will come," Mr. Zhao said. "Each year we will keep improving bit by bit."

—Adam Thompson contributed to this article.

Write to Ian Johnson at ian.johnson@wsj.com

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