Chinese emerge as half-pipe power Chinese, emerge, power

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http://www2.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/sports/story.html?id=df7eb7ef-99db-4af3-a130-c2464b8a2201



Chinese emerge as half-pipe power
Teaching Canucks about 'our' sport

Sean Myers
Calgary Herald

Friday, January 29, 2010

A new, and perhaps unlikely snowboarding powerhouse has emerged in women's half-pipe tearing up the international circuit.

The Chinese women swept the podium at last week's World Cup event at the Stoneham resort near Quebec City. Xuetong Cai, Zhifeng Sun and Xu Chen earned gold, silver and bronze followed by Canadians in the next six places.

That's seven medals for China at four women's half-pipe World Cup events this season. And four Chinese medal winners, including Jiayu Liu who won gold in August, are in Calgary this week to compete Saturday at the last World Cup event before the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.

"(We were) surprised we won all three," says team manager Hualiang Wang, adding there's no secret why the women are doing so well this year: "Hard training and good coaching."

Tom McIllfaterick, chief executive of the Canadian Snowboard Federation, says the Chinese women have proven to be naturals at half-pipe in the six years the country has been competing.

"They have such a strong acrobatic tradition in China between gymnastics and a lot of martial arts. You get three-and four-year-old kids who are learning at that age acrobatic moves that become instinctive. So you don't have to worry about teaching them about that side of it. They looked at it as how do we reverse engineer this sport and apply the acrobatics to snow," says McIllfaterick. "They're probably the strongest country in women's freestyle aerials (skiing) right now. That's what they did over the past decade. They're now doing the same thing with half-pipe and I think will give the Americans a run for their money."

McIllfaterick says women's half-pipe is the Canadian team's weakest event heading to Vancouver and he expects China and the United States to dominate.

"We're one of the strongest overall countries. We have medal hopes in every discipline, but in half-pipe our women are still young," he says.

Many of the top Olympic hopefuls for Canada and the United States are not competing this weekend at Canada Olympic Park as they prepare for Vancouver. In the women's half-pipe, that could leave the field open for another sweep by China says McIllfaterick.

And at the Olympics next month, at least one of the Chinese women is a good bet for a podium finish.

"I think they're going to surprise people in Vancouver," says McIllfaterick. "And certainly they're going to be strong in 2014. They're teaching us things about our own sport."