Chinese aim for Winter Olympic gold in curling

With the Winter Olympics starting in Vancouver next Friday, China's fabled sports system has got a new gold medal target fixed firmly in its sights: curling.

A decade ago almost no one in China had ever heard of curling, let alone played the sport.

China has never before competed in curling at an Olympics. Yet Wang Bingyu and her team go into the women's event at Vancouver as the reigning world champions, having won the title last year in South Korea.

Even after China dominated the games in Beijing in 2008, the rise from nowhere of the country's women curlers is one of the most dramatic examples of the way in which it is able to forge medalwinning athletes in sports for which there is no tradition or home audience.

"It is definitely remarkable that the Chinese women could win a world championship," says Allen Cameron, who writes a curling column for the Calgary Herald in Canada, the country that traditionally dominated the sport and boasts 730,000 curlers, more than the rest of the world combined.

But he points out that it is a sport where physical size is not important, which might make it attractive to Asian countries. "And no team in the world has trained as hard as the Chinese women."

When 25-year-old Ms Wang, who goes by the name of Betty abroad, started playing the sport eight years ago, there were no dedicated facilities and they had to use ice hockey rinks, sometimes waiting until well after midnight to get on the ice. Curlers use a special smooth-soled shoe on one foot to slide: China's curlers made do with a plastic bag to begin with.

Even now, only about 200 people play the sport in China.

But Ms Wang and her three team-mates have one advantage over curlers from other nations. As a result of the country's sports system, they are full-time professionals paid a salary by the state. They all come from Harbin in north-east China and attended the city's state-run sports school.

The Chinese have hired Dan Rafael, a full-time Canadian Coach, for the men's and women's teams. And they also pay for the teams to spend several months every year training and competing in Canada.