The 2007 Chinese National Championship in trampoline kicked off today in Xiaoshan, a district of the city of Hangzhou. The event will take place from June 7 through June 12, 2007. It is an important step for the Chinese athletes on the path to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
This event is held a little more than one month after the first major international trampoline event ever held on Chinese soil, the Kunshan World Cup, where the Chinese athletes dominated to an extent never reached before. In the men's, the top 6 of the preliminaries was trusted by Chinese athletes (Dong Dong, Lu Chunlong, Ye Shuai, Tu Xiao, Que Zhicheng, and Liu Qipeng) if guest athletes were included. In the women's, the Chinese had trusted 4 of the top 5 spots and 5 of the top 7 spots (Huang Shanshan, Zhong Xingping, Li Meng, He Wenna, and Luo Dan). In the finals, the Chinese took both gold medals and both silver medals, a performance never achieved before in 15 years of World Cup competitions.
This 2007 Chinese National Championship will be an important basis to determine which athletes will represent China at the 2007 Quebec City World Championships and at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. It was reported to us that due to the importance of the event, the Chinese athletes have been training even much harder than before over the last three weeks.
The top 12 athletes at this competition will go to Shanghai for an Olympic test competition that will take place on June 15-18, 2007, right after the Xiaoshan competition.
