When Murray Cluff is desperate to make a point to Chinese Olympic Games freestyle skier Ning Qin, he reaches for the camera and laptop, both vital learning aids when the language barrier gets in the way.
Canadian coach Cluff speaks little Chinese, while 22-year-old Ning has only a rudimentary grasp of English, so technology has come to the rescue for China’s first moguls medal hopeful.
“It’s one of the biggest challenges that I have ever had as a coach. We use technology. I film her doing stuff. Then I point at it and say ‘mei you’ [don’t in Chinese],” Cluff said.
Photo: AFP
Back in 1980, Cluff won the freestyle world title and then coached compatriot Jennifer Heil to gold at the 2006 Turin Olympics and silver in Vancouver four years later.
“When I first started working with them [the Chinese] in July 2012, they said that they wanted to win in Sochi. I explained to them that the best I can do is to get her Ning to qualify for Sochi. You need seven to 12 years to be able to win,” Cluff said.
Ning and Cluff have been dubbed “Mini Team Red,” a reference to China’s women’s aerials team known as “Team Red” that includes Li Nina, who took silver in Turin and Vancouver.
Ning’s main target is not Sochi, but gold at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Cluff has a simple ambition for his pupil in Russia — just to get into the last round of qualification.
“It will be tough, but it’s achievable. If we can get 18th or 19th I’ll be extremely happy,” Cluff said of Ning, who took up aerials skiing in 2000 when she was nine, before switching to moguls in 2005.
“In 2006, there was so much expectation to win and there was intense pressure. Now there is the satisfaction that someone who was finishing 40th has progressed and qualified for the Olympics. For me that was exciting,” Cluff said.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier