After achieving rapid progresses in the past two years, "the Chinese women's team has the potential for the gold medal in Beijing while their men peers are also favorities for the medals," said Wang, a coach of the Zhejiang provincial team at the Games.

"The Chinese women are surely within the top three in the world, with the biggest challenges coming from Australia, Canada and the United States, all of them are on the same level," said Wang, coach of the women's national team in 1996, "And the men's team is also in the world's leading group, which includes Lithuania, Norway, Canada and the United States."

As goalball for the blind only started in the 1980s in China with a total of some 500 players nationwide, both its men's and women's teams, with poor experience and lack in skills, were eliminated in the preliminaries of the Athens Paralympics, said Wang, a hot candidate for the Chinese women's national goalball team, which was dismantled at the moment to make way for the athletes to have their own jobs at a private enterprise.

The 63-year-old Wang, a former dean of a junior sports school at Yuhang, Zhejiang province, who engaged himself in the sport since 2005, has become one of the best blind goalball coaches in China, winning both national and Asian titles during his short stint as coach.

"We are hoping for convincing wins in the Beijing Paralympics to put us into the proper rank in the world," said Wang, adding that the women's team has already made a history for the Chinese blind as they only lost to Australia 8-6 to settle for the silver medal in the world goalball championship in May, 2006.

Chen Liangliang, a member of the Chinese men's national team, said that they are close to the world best in skills but are weak in stamina, and "physical training become the key elements in our daily training".

In 2004, China set up its first special training center of goalball for the blind at Yuhang, Zhejiang province, with the help of the private enterprise. The center with three standard fields, also becomes the national training site, probably the sole center of the kind in the world as most of the goalball teams are clubs of amateur players.

Lu Cailiang, chief of the national training center for goalball, said that "more funds have been put into the center and more talents are to be selected from the ongoing National Games to strengthen the national teams for better performances in the Beijing Paralympics."

Goalball is a team sport designed for blind athletes. It was devised by Austrian Hanz Lorenzen and German Sepp Reindle in 1946 in an effort to help in the rehabilitation of visually impaired World War II veterans.

The sport evolved into a competitive game over the next few decades and was a demonstration event at the 1976 Paralympics in Toronto. The sport's first championship was held in 1978 and in 1980 goalball became a part of the Paralympics.

Participants compete in teams of three, and try to throw a ball that has bells embedded in it, into the opponents' goal.

They must use the sound of the bell to judge the position and movement of the ball.

Games consist of two 10 minute halves. Blindfolds allow partially sighted and sighted players to compete on an equal footing.