Olympic rowing champions keep dominance at National Games

XI'AN - The Tokyo Olympic women's quadruple sculls champions eased to top podium of China's 14th National Games on Saturday, the first day that witnessed rowing gold medals.

In Yangling, Shaanxi Province, Tokyo Olympic champions Chen Yunxia, Zhang Ling, Lyu Yang and Cui Xiaotong - led the race from the very beginning to the end, beating second finisher Shandong Team by 2.34 seconds.

"We tried our best, and we could feel domestic teams have improved a lot," said Zhang Ling, adding that their form was not as sound as that in Tokyo because they haven't recovered entirely although they keep training every day.

"Training hard shows athletes' respect for competition," said Lyu Yang.

Apart from Cui Xiaotong, the other three also competed in other events. In fact, Cui had got her right thigh injured before Tokyo 2020 and is still in recovery. "I didn't feel the pain until we won gold," she said.

After the win, the four put the gold medals on the neck of their coach Zhang Xiuyun, and asked her to take interview together with them.

Zhang said, "Forget about the past honor and keeps moving forward, this is the way to constant success."

"We are really grateful to our coach because she has taught us a lot, not just on training," Cui said, "She keeps telling us to keep a low profile and train hard like rookies."

After Tokyo 2020, the four began to count down on how many days they still have for Paris 2024. "We do have confidence, because confidence is also the spirit of rowing," said Chen Yunxia.