Home team slides into contention

Among the 10 curlers in the Chinese delegation to Harbin, only female curler Wang Rui and male curler Xu Xiaoming remain from Sapporo's gold medal-winning teams.

The first puck also dropped in the ice hockey competition on Feb 4. The Chinese men got off to a rocky start, falling narrowly to the ROK 6-5 in the first round and getting thumped 6-1 by Kazakhstan in its second game at the Harbin Ice Hockey Stadium.

The 3,000-seat arena will be full again Friday, as the men go in search of a morale-boosting win against Thailand in what will be a do-or-die match if the host hopes to advance further in the competition, with tests against Chinese Taipei and Japan looming large.

Led by captain Yu Baiwei, a Harbin native, the Chinese women's ice hockey team is currently ranked 12th in the world. In the final of the 2025 IIHF Ice Hockey Women's Asia Championship held in Beijing on Nov 3, China was defeated by Japan. The battle for the gold medal at this Asian Winter Games may be a replay of that intense encounter.