Women’s
Volleyball World Cup Championships—another first.
Shooter Xu Haifeng won China’s
first Olympic gold medal, at the 23rd Olympic Games on July 28,
1984.
Chinese divers took three championships
at the 2nd World Cup Diving Championships in 1981. Then Chinese
divers carried off 10 championships from the 5th to 7th World Swimming
Championships and won nine gold medals from the 23rd to 26th Olympic
Games. The Chinese diving team has become one of the world’s leading
diving teams since the Barcelona Olympic Games.
China became a formal member of
the International Badminton Federation only in 1981. Since then,
Chinese badminton teams have won the Thomas Cup four times, the
Uber Cup six times and the Sudirman Trophy three times.
In 1988, Yang Wenyi broke the
50-meter freestyle world record. She was the first Chinese athlete
recognized as breaking a record by the International Swimming Federation.
The Chinese swimming team won five gold medals in the 25th and 26th
Olympic Games and 12 gold medals in the 7th World Swimming Championships,
held in 1994, coming first.
The Chinese team won 60 percent
of the gold medals at the 11th Asian Games held in Beijing in 1990,
revealing the fact that China had become a major sporting nation.
The world-famous Chinese athletes
Wang Junxia , Qu Yunxia and four others broke the women’s 10,000-m,
3,000-m and 1,500-m records 11 times in 1993, a historic breakthrough
in China’s track and field events.
In 1994, Chinese athletes captured
79 championships in 11 events. Twenty-six athletes set 40 world
records on 72 occasions. Meanwhile, China’s professional soccer
players made gains, starting in 1994, which aroused the enthusiasm
of both players and the fans. The deepening of the structural reform
in physical culture has involved not only soccer but other athletic
events as well.
Great achievements were made by
China in sports in 1998, when Chinese athletes captured 83 world
championships in 15 events, including 28 world championships in
6 events in the Olympic Games. Thirty athletes set 31 world records
on 68 occasions.
Chinese
athletes have won altogether 1,298 world championships since the
founding of New China in 1949, and have created or broken 933 world
records.
In
1999, Chinese athletes won 92 championships in 18 events in world
competitions, including table tennis, badminton, weightlifting,
diving, gymnastics, shooting and short-track speed skating. Sixteen
Chinese athletes broke 22 world records in weightlifting, shooting
and fin swimming on 50 occasions.
The
year 1993 witnessed the most conspicuous achievements made by Chinese
athletes, who won 103 world championships and broke world records
in 124 events.
World
Championships Won by Chinese Athletes