China in sports: 2021 booms, 2022 excites

Editor's notes:

Despite the ongoing pandemic, 2021 saw a large number of big moments in sports, including new world records for individual athletes and events in general. Even with so many fresh memories, there's more to expect in the coming year. Let's take a brief look at some of 2021's biggest sports achievements what's expected on the field in 2022.

I. Numbers wowing the world

At the Tokyo Olympics, China bagged 38 gold, 32 silver and 18 bronze medals, equaling its haul of golds at London 2012 for the best performance at an overseas Olympic Games. At the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, the Chinese team won 96 gold, 60 silver and 51 bronze medals, topping the ranking both in gold and total medals for the fifth consecutive Paralympics. The team also set 29 new world records.

At the Tokyo Summer Olympics, sprinter Su Bingtian set a new Asian record when he clocked 9.83 seconds in the men's 100-meter sprint semifinal. Swimmer Zhang Yufei broke the Olympic record in the women's 200m butterfly and won her first Olympic gold at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics. China also won its first gold in the women's 4x200m freestyle relay with a new world and Olympic record time of 7:40.33.

At the 14th National Games in Xi'an, 13 world records were broken in shooting, weightlifting and rock climbing.

Freestyle skier Gu Ailing became the first woman to ever land a right double cork 1440 in any freeski competition to claim her first Big Air World Cup title at Steamboat Resort in Colorado on Dec 4.