SPORTS> China
Golden girls dare not disappoint at World Cup stop
By Lei Lei (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-11-26 08:59

China's short track team has its sights firmly set on Vancouver 2010 and plans on adding to its season haul of eight gold medals at the upcoming World Cup stop in Beijing from Friday.

"The Summer Olympic Games are over and now it's time for our winter sports athletes to go to work," said Wang Meng, who set world records last month in the women's 500m and 3,000m relay at the season-opener in the United States.

"The feeling of competing in Beijing is special since it is our home ground and we want to surprise fans," added the Chinese superstar, one of 12 skaters from the country who will be fighting for honors this weekend.

With several Chinese stars recently retired, the current team is full of new blood and young coaches now going full throttle to overachieve their predecessors without much of a grace period.

The third stop of the World Cup series is the toughest yet staged in the sport-hungry country's 11-year history of hosting the event with more skaters (180) from more countries and regions (28) taking part. The ten events range from 500m to (men's) 5000m relay.

Given their history of success at the sport, expectatioins of China's women are high.

"I hope the women's team won't be put under too much pressure due to their good results from the last two stops," said Wang Chunlu, manager of the team.

"We have to strive for better results gradually and try our best rather than getting too obsessed about gold medals."

The men's team has no medals so far and desperately need to overcome their crisis of confidence to make an impact at Beijing Capital Gymnasium, said Wang. "They lag significantly behind the world's best teams, like South Korea and Canada," she said. "Through the competition, we hope they can see their own shortcomings and figure out how to correct them."

The three-day event will start on Friday with qualifications in the morning.