Ski jumpers' Olympic hopes soar

Former hurdler among three Chinese ready to challenge Western domination at Beijing Games

As a former hurdler who idolized track and field star Su Bingtian, Song Qiwu has taken his pursuit of speed onto the snow and into the air in one of the most thrilling of winter sports.

The 20-year-old Sichuan native, who had never even touched real snow before 2018, has defied the odds to become a winter Olympian ready to compete at his home Games in the daunting, gravity-defying sport of ski jumping.

As one of three Chinese ski jumpers to have qualified for the Beijing 2022 Winter Games, Song's target has been the same as his hero Suto spearhead China's rise in a Western-dominated sport on the Olympic stage.

"Hopefully I can produce my best performance at the Beijing Winter Olympics, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for most athletes, just like what Su did with his feat," Song said of the sprinter's historic appearance in the men's 100m final at the Tokyo Summer Olympics.

"My goal is to soar to the world's highest level in the sport, and I've drawn enough motivation from Su to do it," added Song, who earned his spot at Beijing 2022 by securing enough ranking points from a series of International Ski Federation Cup-level events.

With only one woman, Chang Xinyue, qualified for the 2018 Games in South Korea, China's national ski jumping program has been drafting athletes from other sports, such as track and field, gymnastics and taekwondo, to deepen its talent pool.

A full-time men's 110m hurdler until December 2018, Song's progression from literally knowing nothing about skiing－hailing from warm Sichuan province－to competing in the top-flight World Cup series over the course of just three years has underlined the host's ambition to expand its athletic prowess into niche winter sports.

The combination of foreign expertise and high-tech training facilities proved a game-changer for Song and his peers to catch up with the world's elite sooner than expected, said team manager Xu Gaohang.

"We are on the brink of major breakthroughs in ski jumping, having three athletes qualified for Beijing 2022 and we're still going after a qualification spot in the team event," Xu said during an online interview last week.

"Unfortunately, most of our athletes only got to compete internationally for the first time at the beginning of the Olympic season, due to the long break caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

"But they still got used to the elite-level tests very quickly and have shown their rapid progress facilitated by the modern training support."