A refreshing view on China and how its Olympic sailing and kiting is on the up. Plus a fishy problem for foilers
My year of travel finished with a four-week trip to China and Brazil. Having been to China seven or eight times before, I was never greatly enamoured by the place and was a bit reluctant to return. After some persuading by my work colleague,s I’m glad I decided to go. It was for two back-to-back kiteboarding events, one in Shenzhen and the other in Zhuhai four hours down the road.
The place was much cleaner, more organised and more friendly than I remembered from previous trips. Such is the breathtaking rate of progress in this ambitious country, a year is a long time in China, and I hadn’t been there since 2019.
For all that we read in the press about the rising threat of China to the west, at street level the normal every-day people of China are so friendly and helpful. The Chinese are also really getting into their sailing and their kiting. Would this happen without the carrot of Olympic medals? I have my doubts about that. If there was no Olympic pathway, the sport in China might sink without trace. But the Chinese Government loves to win Olympic medals, and when the Chinese decide to do something, they do it properly. For the two or three 49er or 49erFX skiff teams that we in the UK see competing at international events, there are 40 or so other teams training 360 days a year back in China vying to be good enough to earn that international travel ticket. It is a medal making machine, and that’s not entirely a bad thing.
From barely knowing kiteboarding a decade ago, the Chinese athletes of both sexes are now starting to rub shoulders with the best in the world and are outside bets for the Olympic podium next summer. If you thought that the Chinese are generally quite short, well mostly they are, but Qibin Huang must stand around 6’2”. The 17-year-old is well spoken, humble, extremely friendly, but absolutely determined. Qibin beat the reigning World Champion from Singapore, Max Maeder, at the event in Shenzhen, and Qibin was understandably over the moon. It was a psychological breakthrough.
This was pretty much the first time that Maeder, also 17 years old, has been beaten in major competition this year. Recently shortlisted for the Rolex Sailor of the Year Award, Maeder is most observers’ pick for the gold medal next year, and with Huang’s progress it’s quite possible that Asia could take two spots on the men’s podium.
One of the random factors that made the difference bet
