BANGKOK, Aug. 7 (Xinhua) — The Chinese athletics team kept low-key for gold medal hopes at the 24th Universiade, due to the absence of world-class athletes, including the renowned “Flying Spectacles Man” Hu Kai.
Hu Kai, the men’s 100 meters champion at the 23rd Universiade, announced his absence to Bangkok earlier last month, owing to injury.
“Besides the injury problems, some of our best athletes also missed the Universiade so as to get better prepared for the coming Athletics World Championships later this month in Japan,” said Wu Yuejian, leader of Chinese athletics team.
China historically grabbed three gold medals in track and fields competitions in last Summer Universiade in Izmir, Turkey, but only Jiang Qiuyan of women’s 20km walk is back on her defending track this year in Bangkok.
“Jiang is undoubtedly the ace athlete in our team, who will probably contribute the first gold medal to the Chinese delegation,” Wu said, “but as for other athletes, we basically aims at providing them the opportunity to practice more in the international multi-sport games.”
Women’s 20km walk will start at 06:30 local time on Aug. 9, which will officially kick off the competitions at the games. If lucky, Jiang will be able to defend her title while claiming the first gold medal at the Universiade.
“We have not set any explicit number of medals for the athletes, since many of them are not professional athletes, but university students,” Wu said, adding that the United States, Germany and Russia will still be the top three on the track and field medal tally.
In the track and field competitions, China can not compete with the three giants comprehensively, though Chinese “flying men”, Liu Xiang and Hu Kai, have once highlighted the great progress in the field.
Universiade has always been the seedbed for world-class athletics stars. Michael Johnson of the United States started his way from Universiade to become one of the fastest man in the world.
The 24th Universiade will officially open on Wednesday in Bangkok.