Let the Games commence!

Eyes on the ice

Although those new events should trigger curiosity back home, the eyes of China's die-hard winter sports fans will still likely be focused on our escapdes on the ice－especially in short-track speed skating and figure skating.

Facing stiff competition from the host, China's short-track squad has prioritized relay events－the women's 3,000m and men's 5,000m－at the Gangneung Ice Arena. The team's pre-race training at the competition venue has become a hot topic in South Korean media, but China's head coach, Li Yan, has tried to play down the rivalry with the host.

"It's never been easy preparing for an Olympic Games with so much at stake. No matter how many medals won before, we have to start from zero every time and we just want to be the best we can when the time comes," said Li. Out of China's 12 gold medals won at Winter Olympics since 2002, nine were contributed by the short-track speed skating team, which used to boast veteran stars Yang Yang and Wang Meng.

However, a strong South Korean team, which holds world records in half of the eight Olympic disciplines and has reaped 15 golds at four World Cup events this season, has made China an underdog in Pyeongchang.

In individual events, men's four-time world champion Wu Dajing is China's most realistic medal hope (in the 500m), while the injury-hampered Fan Kexin, the women's 1,000m silver medalist at the 2014 Sochi Games, has been struggling to regain her pace of late.

In figure skating, world champion pair Han Cong and Sui Wenjing are strongly fancied to get on the podium in Pyeongchang after winning their first worlds in Finland last March.

Meanwhile, China's women's curling team and the mixed combo of Wang Rui and Ba Dexin are expected to bring attention back to the sport, which enjoyed a boom in popularity after the female squad won bronze at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.