As the Chinese taekwondo team only finished with a silver medal at the Bangkok Universiade in 2007, this time in Belgrade, they expect better results.

"We hope we can get better results than we did in Bangkok," said Liu Zhanlu, team leader of the Chinese taekwondo team, here on Wednesday. "We did a lot of preparation, and our shooters are all quite in form."

As usual, the gold expectation for China in taekwondo competitions mainly relies on the women's players.

China has dispatched 10 male and nine female taekwondo players to the Universiade. Apart from traditional events, there is a newly introduced event called Poomase, and five of the 19 players are going to take part in it.

"We are strong in women's 47kg, 55kg, 63kg and 72kg categories," said Liu. "Our aim is to do a much better job than we did last time in Bangkok."

According to Liu, the opponents are also quite strong.

"South Korea, Iran, Turkey and Thailand all have very good players in taekwondo," he said.

At the 24th Summer Universiade, the South Korean taekwondo team dominated the competition as they won seven gold medals, while Thailand, Chinese Taipei and Iran each took three gold medals.

"We won't hide that we have high expectations of our taekwondo team. We believe that our athletes are capable of achieving some exceptional results," said Hamid Reza Taheri on Tuesday, head of the Iranian delegation.

The 25th Summer Universiade, set for July 1-12, will be the largest sporting event that Serbia has ever hosted.

A total of 8,500 athletes from 144 countries and regions will compete in 201 events of 15 sports.

(Xinhua News Agency July 1, 2009)