Preparations for Beijing Games continuing apace as two-year countdown begins

Aiming high

On July 31, 2015, Beijing and Zhangjiakou weree announced as the host cities for the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Since then, China has been pursuing ambitious targets to have full participation in all 109 events and to achieve its best ever result at a winter Games.

Despite scoring just one gold medal at Pyeongchang 2018, the Chinese delegation made strides in terms of participation, featuring in 53 events－its highest total to date.

Still, more than doubling its representation at the 2022 Games is a major challenge for China.

At the moment, China is on course to qualify directly for 61 events out of 109, while the remaining 48 will be decided through ranking points.

Featuring in all events is all the more difficult considering around a third of Winter Olympic events had not been widely practiced in China before it was awarded the 2022 Games.

With this in mind, China has looked overseas for guidance, with 170 foreign nationals now working on the coaching staff of national teams－up from just two in 2014.

A number of world-famous coaching teams have established cooperation with China's Winter Sports Administrative Center, including Canadian figure-skating guru Brian Orser, who guided South Korea's Kim Yuna and Japan's Yuzuru Hanyu to Olympic gold medals.

Besides joining forces with world-renowned coaches, China has also moved forward in technological research and development, while maintaining a zero-tolerance stance against doping.

China is also working on streamlining its pool of elite athletes.

Ni Huizhong, director of the China's Winter Sports Management Center, revealed that the number of athletes preparing for Beijing 2022 dropped from over 4,000 to 1,153 last year.

Recent results prove that the strategy has been at least partially successful, with medal tallies more than double those at the same stage in the previous season.

However, Ni cautioned: "We still have clear weaknesses and disadvantages, especially in some events where we are encountering a big crisis," he said.