Chinese volleyball players and coaches celebrate their win over Germany at the World Cup women's tournament in Tokyo on Nov 18. China beat Germany 3-0 and finished third overall to advance to the 2012 London Olympic Games. Kzauhiro Nogi / Agence France-Presse

Wang Yimei (left) of China spikes the ball past German players. Veteran Wang will lead a young Chinese team to fight for a podium finish at next year's London Games. Kzauhiro Nogi / Agence France-Presse

The Chinese women's volleyball team has booked its Olympic ticket, but there's still a lot of work to be done if the former world powerhouse wants to dominate the game again, Tang Zhe reports.

You can go to London now." Players on the China women's volleyball team hugged and burst into tears when head coach Yu Juemin said those words after they defeated Germany at the 2011 World Cup in Japan earlier this month to qualify for the London Olympic Games.

It was not a battle of life and death as there are more Olympic qualifiers to be played for the teams that didn't finish in the top three in Japan, but the players and the coach knew they needed early qualification to rekindle confidence and morale.

The Chinese side was once the most accomplished sports team in the country. Thirty years ago, it won its first world title at the World Cup in Japan, and then dominated the court by claiming all five world's major titles (including World Championship and Olympic Games) in the following six years.

However, the team went into a steady decline in the 1980s, except for a short rebound at the 2003 World Cup and 2004 Athens Olympics, where China returned to the top of the world after a 17-year gold drought under coach Chen Zhonghe.

However, the team regressed when Chen left the post in 2009.

Chen's successor, Cai Bin, stepped down within a year due to the team's "worst performance in history". Wang Baoquan, who took charge of the side after Cai in March 2010, only stayed in the position for five months.

Yu, who had been an assistant to three coaches since he moved to the national team in 2005, was then appointed to the post last August amid concerns about his ability to handle the high-profile job.

Two months later, Yu said his team had fallen to second-class status in the world after finishing 10th at the 2010 FIVB World Championship, the squad's worst ever effort at the event.

Though it secured the Guangzhou Asian Games title last November, China suffered another fiasco at the World Grand Prix Finals by losing four out of five matches in Macao in August. Yu was criticized by media and fans as incapable of coaching the squad.

"Our team was suffering every day during the Grand Prix," Yu said. "I can deal with the pressure from outside, but I don't want my players to bear it. They are so young and play so hard. We don't have many talented athletes playing volleyball in China nowadays, and we can't afford to hurt the sport more.

"But when we look back, I think the defeat at the Grand Prix Finals was not a bad thing for our players," the 51-year-old said. "We talked to the players after the tournament in the hope of making them more mature and stable during matches.

"As a result, they showed their confidence and fighting spirit at the Asian Championship and World Cup, which compensated for our disadvantages in technique," said Yu, whose team finished top at the Asian Championship in September. "We are lucky to qualify for the London Olympics at the first opportunity it is a result of the players' effort to seize the precious chance."

Despite China's fine performance at the World Cup, Yu said his team still trailed the world's elite by a fair margin.

"Though we took third place at the World Cup, we can't say we are among the top three in the world, after all, Russia, Cuba and Brazil are all strong teams (while Italy and the US finished first and second at the World Cup)," Yu said. "Our team is improving and we played at a good standard at the World Cup, but we are still some distance from the first-class teams, we are just trying to catch up with them. But each of us won't give up any opportunity to fight for a medal at the Olympics."

Former coach Chen, who was at the helm of the national team for more than eight years, also praised the side.

"I'm really excited to see the powerful return of Chinese volleyball," Chen wrote in his column for Chinese newspaper Titan Sports. "The competition at the Olympic Games will be undoubtedly much fiercer, but women's volleyball in China has taken a major step through this World Cup, which is really important.

"Now that we have won Olympic qualification, we should start preparing now for an Olympic medal," he said.

(China Daily 11/27/2011 page8)