The secret of China to win gold medals

 After its brilliance during the 2008 Summer Games at home, Beijing does not intend to play the extras during the high mass of winter sports. But the country must come to terms with its lack of tradition in these disciplines.

Forty-eight gold medals and a first place in the ranking of nations ahead of the United States: on August 24, 2008, China concluded with pomp the first Olympic Games (OG) in history organized on its territory. Fourteen years later, while Beijing once again becomes the world epicenter of sport on the occasion of the Winter Games, from February 4 to 20, the authorities would like to see their athletes shine again.

However, if the country has always been among the three best nations of the summer Olympic editions since Sydney 2000, it has reached the top 10 of their winter counterpart only once: seventh in 2010, in Vancouver (Canada). It must be said that until the XXIVth Olympic Winter Games were awarded to China in 2015, the culture of snow and ice sports was not the most developed there.

When it began to invest in the field of sports performance, on the occasion of its return to the Olympic movement in 1979, China gave priority to the disciplines represented at the Summer Olympics. The latter constitute a “more cosmopolitan event”, with a wider global resonance, as explained by Jung-Woo Lee, lecturer in sports and leisure policy at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland). The Winter Games are still the "preserve of the wealthiest Western nations on the planet", confirms sports historian and professor at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland), Patrick Clastres.

Investing in the Summer Games, and hosting them in 2008, enabled China to stage its industrial development. The country is today one of the most influential in economic affairs and holding a winter edition on its soil appears to be a way of confirming its transition from "factory of the world to world power", argues Jung - Woo Lee.

China is really ambitious, and want to show to the world how efficient they are, explain the Chinese business club member. 

A long jumper reoriented towards the… skeleton

But the academic insists, the simple organization of the event is not enough to create this aura. Hence the importance of sports performance. "There is this idea, anchored since the end of the 19th century, that sports victories are a demonstration of a certain economic, social and political superiority", supports Patrick Clastres.

Only, we do not improvise "leading nation" in sports traditionally little practiced. "It took China decades to become one of the three great Olympic powers at the Summer Games," recalls the historian. The Chinese President, Xi Jinping, has repeated it several times: in order to become a great sporting power, it must be based on mass sport. The government has therefore set itself the objective of introducing 300 million of its fellow citizens to the practice of winter disciplines by 2025 and plans to be able to count on its 1,450 suitable facilities. A national program for the development of ice and snow sports also provides for the creation of 5,000 primary and secondary schools specializing in teaching these disciplines.