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SPORTS> China
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Wang warms to captain's role
By Lei Lei (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-11-12 08:52 Olympic champion Wang Meng can be as frosty as her hometown of Harbin but the new captain of China's women's short track speedskating team says she has reined in her bad temper, forgotten old spats with her coach and is ready to take the team to new heights.
"We worked very hard for this season, which is the last one before the 2010 (Vancouver) Winter Games, and we've done a good job on the first two stops," said Wang, who gold medaled in the 500m at her first Olympics in Turin in 2006 and took a silver and bronze in the longer distances. "The whole team is making great progress right now and I can also control my temper. I'm now the captain and I know that the younger team members will be watching to see what example I set." At the Asian Winter Games in early 2007, the conflict between her and head coach Li Yan peaked and captured the attention of the Chinese public as Wang openly criticized Li's teaching methods. Li was back from a stint coaching American Olympic champion Apolo Anton Ohno and was in no mood to tolerate dissent from within her own ranks, a stance that ultimately sparked the Chinese Winter Sports Administrative Center to ban Wang from competing at that year's World Championships. She was back in the national team six months later however and enjoyed a run of good form that already includes six gold medals from the first two stops of the latest ISU World Cup series in the United States and Canada, with Wang blazing new world records along the way in the 500m and 3,000 relay race in the United States. Now the feisty young skater says she has grown up and deserves her shot at captaining the team, a rank bestowed on her just prior to the start of the season. "Experiencing one Olympics and several international competitions, I think I have grown more mature and I see the captaincy as a new kind of responsibility," said the 23-year-old. The team has already relegated archrivals South Korea to second place in the world rankings - including the traditional chink in China's armor, the 1,500m. Coach Li says things are on the right track. "The team is following its four-year plan and has achieved everything it set out to do at the competitions so far," she said. "Wang has improved a lot both technically and psychologically and is now a responsible captain." Short track has always been a cornerstone of China's strength at winter sports. Yang Yang headed up a golden era for the sport punctuated by her five Olympic medals over three Winter Games and 21 world titles over a span of eight years. Her two golds at Salt Lake City in 2002 included China's first-ever Winter Olympic gold medal. Li said she hopes to incubate a second generation of gold prospectors. "Of course I want to bring up a fresh golden team for China and the current young team is qualified," she said. "Wang was the only skater who could compete with the (world's best) before, but now the whole team is improving." Seventeen-year-old Zhou Yang has already proven herself an outstanding member of the team, squeezing past Korea's famed blocking techniques to grab two golds at the 1,500m in the season-opener. "My technique has got better and better so I'm more confident," said Zhou, now on her second year on the international circuit. "The Winter Olympics is my ultimate goal and I hope to do even better in Vancouver." Men's medal drought In contrast, China's men have had to deal with a devastating medal drought since the retirement of multiple world and Olympic champion Li Jiajun after Turin. "Technique-wise, we have developed relatively slowly compared to the rest of the world," said Li Ye, a bronze-medalist in the 5,000m relay in Salt Lake City. "I hope we can patch up the distance as soon as possible and rejoin the world's best." Coach Li however delivered a more damning verdict. "The men's team lose before they even reach the starting line," she said, adding that they need to be more motivated and train harder.
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