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Chinese women look to Rio after silver at worlds
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THE Chinese women gymnasts are marching out of the shadow of their counterparts on the men’s team.
The group including Shang Chunsong, Wang Yan, Mao Yi, Tan Jiaxin, Fan Yilin overcame a sloppy qualifier to claim silver in the team finals at the world championships in Glasgow on Tuesday.
Compared to Chinese men, who were going for another world championship yesterday, the women have struggled with consistency. After winning the team gold at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, the Chinese finished off the podium in London three years ago and ran a distant second to the United States at last year’s worlds.
While catching the Americans is tough for everyone at the moment, China’s score of 176.164 was nearly four points clear of surprise bronze medalist Britain. The Americans finished with 181.338. At the moment, the top of the podium appears out of reach. Still, China is encouraged with less than a year to go before the 2016 Olympics. “We knew we wouldn’t win first place, so we were relaxed going into the finals,” Shang said.
Coach Xiong Jingbin credited a mental adjustment to Tuesday’s turnaround. China plodded through qualifying, slipping off bars and looking like kind of a mess. The mistakes largely vanished in the finals. “It all came down to the mental state, so we strengthened mental preparations (after the qualification) and told the kids to do what they have been doing at day-to-day training,” Xiong said.
The girls were thrown off at the qualifier when they found the judges got moved from the floor to the benches, a change by the sport’s governing body.
But Tuesday’s performance was so inspiring that China now has its eyes on the gold in Rio. “In terms of difficulty, we are closing the gap with the Americans, but we fall short in how we execute the routines,” said Ye Zhennan, who leads the Chinese delegation to Glasgow. “We still have advantages in uneven bars and balance beam, but we need to close the gap with the Americans on vault and floor exercise. Hopefully, we will have a showdown with the Americans in Rio.”
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