China begin picking up stars for next Games
By Lei Lei (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-02-27 05:33

Koreans dominate

Chinese skaters, who used to dominate the sport from 1997 to 2000 thanks to the six-time world champion Yang, have seen themselves overtaken by the South Koreans. Ahn Hyun-soo and Jin Sun-yu of South Korea became the triple gold medallists among men and women skaters respectively.

"Ahn and Jin are two genius skaters on the short-track," Tong commented. "Both of them have mastered advanced techniques during the races. They are able to speed up at every part of the racing course, depending on their advanced skating skills rather than only physical strength."

Tong also pointed out that the quickly rising South Koreans came from a wide pool of talent.

"In South Korea, short-track speed skating is the popular sport, just like the table tennis in China," Tong said. "The level of its young skaters is much higher than the youth in China, where the sport is only practiced in two provinces with about 300 registered skaters."

The gap began to appear two years ago.

At the 2004 Beijing World Junior Championships, the home skaters suffered almost a total failure.

With South Korea maintaining its dominance by winning nine of the 10 titles up for grabs, China managed only a silver medal and a bronze and failed to reach the finals in six individual events.

With Yang announcing her retirement on Saturday, Li will also be sure to take off the skates.

However, Tong refused to predict a totally gloomy future for China's short-track skaters.

"Although we haven't found talented skaters in China like Ahn and Jin, I believe that from step-by-step training, new genius will come out," Tong said. "Short-track speed skating needs the efforts from generation to generation. We will do further research on the regularity of the sport and try to resume the success for China."