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The Rise of the Chinese Women
Not surprisingly it was Ying Liu of host nation China who took the win, with the above mentioned home course advantage at her disposal. Yet, there are other factors that puzzle Spitz. “Usually it takes quite some time to advance to the world’s top [level] in an endurance sport like mountain biking, so it’s interesting when people come out of nowhere, like the Chinese women. This seems to happen in other sports, too – especially with the women.”Her thoughts on anti-doping testing were realistic. “It is tough to tackle the doping problem with in-competition controls alone. But it is tough to do the training controls in China. You need a visa to get in to the country and then you need to locate the racers.”
First, it was the Chinese women swimmers, then the Chinese women long-distance runners, now it’s the Chinese women mountain bikers who are doing very well in a short matter of time. It seems pretty clear to me that they’re rising so quickly not only due to their training.