Team China ready to carve it up

Chinese athletes are definitely the ones to watch in the snow sports events at the Harbin Asian Winter Games, which will be held in Yabuli, Heilongjiang province — particularly in freestyle skiing aerials, where Xu Mengtao and Qi Guangpu will be looking to add to their Beijing 2022 Olympic golds.

Four-time Olympic medalist skier Xu is in good shape, winning gold in the women's aerials at the FIS Freestyle Ski World Cup in Lake Placid in US last month. As the most decorated aerialist in history, Xu has seven world championship medals and 30 World Cup victories alongside her Olympic achievements.

The Chinese team, comprising Xu, Li Xinpeng, and Sun Jiaxu — a combination of veteran experience and youthful talent — also claimed gold in the mixed team aerials in Lake Placid. Xu and Li are also likely to take part in the mixed team aerials event in Yabuli.

Also in January, Qi snatched two golds at the FIS Freestyle Ski World Cup event in Lac-Beauport, Canada.

"Everyone knows that I'm not that young anymore," the 34-year-old said. "The younger guys are constantly pushing me, but I just keep working.

"I'm always ready for the competition. I'll keep going."

Chinese freestyle skiing superstar and Olympic gold medalist Gu Ailing announced her withdrawal from the Games due to a series of recent injuries.

Gu said on social media platform Weibo that she suffered a "severe contusion" after a fall in the freeski street event at the 2025 Winter X Games in Aspen, Colorado, last month. In her post, she also revealed that she sustained another injury during a recent training session, which forced her to pull out of the competition.

This means that China's two-time Olympian Zhang Kexin will single-handedly take on its continental rivals in the women's freeski halfpipe competition — and that anyone has a chance to snatch the gold.

In the Big Air event, Liu Mengting will fly the flag for the host after capturing her first FIS Freeski World Cup victory in Klagenfurt, Austria, last month.

Liu made a personal breakthrough with a total score of 170.60 points. It was just the second Big Air victory for a Chinese freeskier, after Gu's triumph in Steamboat, Colorado, back in December 2021.

Meanwhile, Chinese snowboarders are also keen to carve out a legacy on home snow.

Veteran Chinese snowboarder and Harbin native Cai Xuetong said her goal is to top the podium in front of her home crowd.

Cai made her Winter Olympic debut in Vancouver, Canada, in 2010 in the women's halfpipe event as the youngest athlete in the competition. She has continued to improve over the years, securing halfpipe gold at the FIS Snowboard World Championships in Kreischberg, Austria, in 2015, in Sierra Nevada in the US in 2017 and Bakuriani, Georgia, in 2023.

Cai's best performance at the Asian Winter Games, however, came in 2017 in Sapporo, Japan, when she claimed silver.

She will be up against Beijing 2022 bronze medalist Tomita Sena and Shimizu Sara of Japan.

Shimizu, 15, was crowned the Grand Prix champion at Copper Mountain in the United States in December, while Cai finished in second place.

On the men's side, Chinese snowboarder Wang Ziyang, who went viral online after executing a breathtaking triple front flip in the men's snowboard knuckle huck at the 2025 X Games in Aspen, Colorado, will compete in the men's snowboard halfpipe.

The victory not only secured Wang his first X Games title, but also made history, as he became the first Chinese athlete to win the event. The world is now looking in his direction, waiting to see what new tricks he has up his sleeve in Harbin.

He'll be facing off against Japan's Yamada Ryusei, who won halfpipe bronze at the Toyota US Grand Prix in Aspen a week ago, putting him firmly in the "favorites" column for the gold in Yabuli.

cuijia@chinadaily.com.cn