AFP, Shanghai :
China are striking a bleak tone for the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics and warning they will need luck if they are to avoid going home empty-handed — four years before they host the Games for the first time.
Nobody is saying that China have given up on medal success from February 9-25, but high-level sports officials seem to see it as a stepping stone to Beijing 2022, when abject failure is unthinkable.
China unveiled their Olympic squad on Wednesday and will take 82 athletes to South Korea, an increase on the 66 that travelled to Sochi four years ago.
But Sun Yuanfu, a senior winter sports official, warned that public expectations should be low and said that Chinese winter sports suffered from “a poor foundation”.
“If we are lucky, we can get some gold medals. If not, we may get none,” Sun told the state Xinhua news agency in unusually downbeat terms.”We have to work for the best and be prepared for real difficulties.”
China have come a long way in the Summer Olympics, topping the medals table at the Beijing 2008 Games and coming second at London 2012 and third at Rio 2016.
With rising incomes and the growth of the middle class in China, coupled with an aggressive push by the government, winter sports are booming too.
But that is yet to translate into Winter Games success and at Sochi 2014, China won just three golds, all in speed skating.
Sun warned that while China was improving slowly in some other disciplines, “there is no essential breakthrough in general and Chinese participation still relies on the sports it is traditionally good at”.
That means short-track speed skating, figure skating and freestyle skiing, he said.
“As the hosts of the next Winter Olympics, the performance of the Chinese delegation at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics should follow un upward trend,” he cautioned.
“But so far the trend is not obvious, indicating a poor foundation in our winter sports.”That is not to say China are surrendering all hope in Pyeongchang.
They are homing in on the women’s 3,000m and men’s 5,000m relays in short-track, and four-time world champion Wu Dajing is relishing getting one over the South Koreans in front of their home crowd.
