The Chinese short track speedskating team enjoy winning on the international stage but have to be patient before their sport was truly appreciated by their compatriots.

Spearheaded by Turin Olympic champion Wang Meng, the Chinese team recently bagged home five gold medals from the world championships and team world championships.

The serious contender for next year's Vancouver Winter Games, however, have been troubled by the limited talent pool for years.

"The number of trainees has been dwindling in the past years," said coach Zhao Yongjie from Jilin province on Saturday. His athletes are competing at the ongoing short track speedskating event of the 11th National Games here.

"It is more difficult for us to select talents for our provincial team nowadays," he said.

Like in many sports in China, athletes in the short track speedskating are mainly funded by the country after they enter government-owned local sport schools and go through to the provincial level or even the national team if they are lucky and talented enough.

"It seems that many parents are not willing to send their only child to train for this event. Those who do wish to join the schools maynot be able to afford equipments," Zhao added.

The equipments can easily cost an average resident's yearly income in places like northern provinces Jilin and Heilongjiang where ice and snow events are popular.

Whereas in wealthy cities like Shanghai and Hong Kong, warm weather makes ice rink maintenance expensive.

"The national funding is in shortage to maintain a large talent pool while most Chinese are not rich enough to pay for training fees themselves. So we are caught in a difficult situation at present," said China's international judge Qu Li who is officiating at the Games, adding that currently there are about 500 athletes registered in the skating association.

"It is estimated that only about 2,000 athletes train in this event nationwide, which is a very small number," said Qu.

But Qu believed that more people will step on the ice rinks as their life becomes better off.

"For the next five years, China may still face the shortage of promising young athletes but the situation will eventually turn for the better with the economy developing," he said.

He took the growing ice hockey fan base in Beijing as example.

"Now more well-off people in Beijing play ice hockey for fun because they are willing and able to pay for expensive sports including skating," he said. "With China's economy growing, I believe there will be more cities like Beijing and Shanghai."

Actually the short track speedskating, as well as figure skating and ice hockey, is push its way south as more cities built ice rinks.

In the past, northern provinces Heilongjiang and Jilin own most professional ice rinks in China while skating fans can find high-standard skating rink in Beijing, Shanghai and southern provinces Zhejiang and Jiangsu.

The traditional strong teams Heilongjiang and Jilin also find competitors from south as Jiangsu set up their own short track speedskating team six years ago.

Hong Kong with an average temperature of 23 degrees Celsius has yet to own a professional rink but its athletes turned up on the ice all the same.

Lui Pan To drew much attention despite he was lagged behind alone in the first round of 1,500 Friday with an ankle injury.

"I love the sport. To watch the world top athletes competing made me so excited. My dream is competing at the Winter Games like they did," said the 15-year-old Hong Kong native, whose coach Lu Shuo was originally from Jilin.

(Xinhua News Agency April 5, 2009)