Overseas coaches set to lift China on international stage

By Lei Lei (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-10-27 08:41

JINAN, Shandong province: The Chinese national swimming team has signed four Australian coaches to help it progress on the international stage, its main coach revealed at the 11th National Games.

Yao Zhengjie, head coach of the squad, said the coaches include former Australian national coach Otto Sonnleitner and Michael Bohl, coach of Stephanie Rice, who won three gold medals at last year's Beijing Games.

Sonnleitner, a former president of the Australian Swimming Coaches and Teachers Association, has been appointed head coach of China's reserve team.

"Sonnleitner watched all the competitions at the National Games and is very hard working which sets a good example for Chinese coaches," said Yao. "He will take at least 10 young swimmers to train in Australia after the National Games."

Zhang Lin, the reigning men's 800m freestyle world champion and triple gold medalist at the National Games has been training with Dennis Cotterell, coach of Aussie great Grant Hackett, in Australia for a long time.

Liu Zige, who set a world record in the women's 200m butterfly at the National Games last Wednesday, is also training in Australia with Ken Wood, the former coach of butterfly world champion Jessicah Schipper.

"Through the cooperation with these four Aussie coaches we have opened the door to China's swimming and have started to communicate with a swimming powerhouse," said Yao. "We hope to have more communication with the Europeans as well.

"At the World Championships we realized the level of European swimmers has been raised a lot but we still know little about how they improved."

The Chinese swimmers made a big splash at the National Games in Jinan as one world record and 11 Asian marks were rewritten at the eight-day competition, which concluded on Saturday.

Olympic champion Liu set a world record in the 200m butterfly final in 2:01.81, knocking more than a second and a half off the previous world best set by Schipper (2:03.41) at the Rome World Championships.

She also clocked a personal best of 56.07 in the 100m butterfly, which was a new Asian record and only 0.01 off the world record.

World champion Zhang led the medal rush on the men's side by claiming three gold, one silver and one bronze.

"The swimming competition was a success at the National Games and some of the results were very satisfactory," said Yao.

Besides the big names, rookies also claimed their share of the spotlight.

Sixteen-year-old Chen Qian broke Asian records in the 400m and 800m freestyle events in 4:02.35 and 8:20.36 respectively. Her 400m effort ranks fourth in the world.

Yao said Chen loomed as a "leading figure" in women's middle and long-distance events.

"Chen was selected as a reserve junior team member after the Beijing Games and the national team has always kept an eye on her. She did a very good job this time and we will go on watching her closely," Yao said.

Teenager Li Xuanxu chalked up 4:30.43 in the 400m individual medley final to shave more than three seconds off the Asian mark which was held by China's Chen Yan. The time was the second fastest this season. Fourteen-year-old Li Zhesi, a member of the gold medal winning women's 400m medley team at the Rome Worlds, won the 50m freestyle in 24.56, a world top 10 performance this season.

"We have learnt that some veterans will retire after the National Games so we hope more young swimmers born in 1990s will emerge to take over their responsibilities," said Yao.

The national team will hold a training camp in December. A new squad will be formed after the National Grand Prix in April next year and the list will be finalized after the National Championships in the latter half of the year. "The main competition for us next year is the Asian Games in Guangzhou," Yao said.

(China Daily 10/27/2009 page22)