Beijing being chosen to host the 2022 Winter Olympic Games has given a fresh impetus to the development of winter sports. The government has decided to make such sports a national phenomenon and to have "300 million people on ice." The public has responded to these ambitions with enthusiasm, however, the national ice hockey team is still hard pressed to find professional-standard players who have the passion and resolve to compete in 2022.
On a January morning, it can reach 20 degrees Celsius below zero in Harbin, capital of Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. Braving the chill, Wang Wenzhuo put on her winter gear and headed out her front door. It was only 5 am and dawn was still hours away, but for Wang and her teammates, it was the start of another day's training.
Wang, 18, plays for the Harbin women's ice hockey team. Two weeks before the start of China's 13th National Winter Games, it is business as usual for Wang and her teammates.
Wang has already been selected by the national team and will be playing in the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. The Harbin team of about 20 people is one of the two only professional women's ice hockey teams in China and together, they provide a small pool of players for the national team to choose from.
However, not much has changed for the professional teams since Beijing and Zhangjiakou successfully applied to host the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. Right now, the players haven't directly benefited, no extra funding has been given, nor more recruits. It's too soon to talk about the 2022 games, Sun said.
The national women's ice hockey team was once strong and has won medals in the past. However, the professional scene has deteriorated since the 1990s. Right now, the national team faces an extreme shortage of players. At the same time, after the Chinese government's call to popularize winter sports before the 2022 games, ice hockey is more popular than ever with the public. But the situation at the professional level shows no sign of improvement.
Losing numbers
China's women ice hockey team was once one of the best in the world, said Sun Rui, national team player and coach of the Harbin team.
When Sun started playing professional ice hockey for the Harbin team in 1998, the sport was at its peak in China.
"Back then there were 12 professional teams and competition was fierce," she said. "Winning back then wasn't easy, not even for the Harbin team."
Later Sun was chosen to play for the national team. At the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympic Games in Japan, China's women's ice hockey team came in fourth place. In the 2002 games in Salt Lake City and 2010 games in Vancouver, China won seventh place.
In recent years, the Chinese ice hockey team's world ranking fell to around 15.
"There are only two teams to choose national players from, the Harbin team and the Qiqihar team, a total of about 40 people," Sun said. "We are extremely short of players."
The players for the Harbin women's team are usually chosen from among the students at the Harbin Sports Academy. But it's always difficult to recruit women, because many people think ice hockey is a rough sport and not suitable for women, Sun said.
Sun, who is 33, started thinking about retirement after the Toronto Winter Olympic Games in 2010. But for the last five years, she kept coming back to the rink because there was nobody to take her place. In April 2015, she played once again for the Chinese national team during the Ice Hockey World Championships.
As the coach for the Harbin team, Sun sees that the current situation is limiting her layers' development.
"When you look at Beijing or Shanghai, there are many ice hockey clubs, and the children there play thousands of games every year, we are very jealous of them," she said. "The Harbin team only plays around 10 games every year, maybe playing only one game against the national team every year."
The players are always in training, but can only reach an international standard by regularly playing games against other professional teams.
"They are well trained, but it's scary for me to imagine what the future will look like," she said.
