Is China’s 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Team a “Chinese” Team?
Wow! This article took quite a lot of research! I procrastinated on this article for about two weeks and I finally got around to finishing it. I also experimented with fonts, colors and tables in this article. I won’t bug you for long, enjoy…
NHL Veteran Brandon Yip could not believe it, he had been chosen to represent China at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. While it was a dream come true for the aspiring ice hockey player, it was not all joy. While being selected to play for the Chinese National Team was a huge honor for Yip, the team as a whole had its fair share of controversy.
Interested? Read on.
Firstly, let’s dive into who actually is going to Beijing. First of all, Ivano Zanatta, who was born on August 3 1960, is a former ice hockey player of Italian descent. He was the General Manager for the Italian National Ice Hockey team and he was head coach of the Croatian National team. Moving on, he is now the head coach of the Kunlun Red Star. I believe it was a great decision to put Zanatta as the head coach of the Chinese National Team as most of the players were from the Kunlun Red Star. This would aid in communication the players would be used to Zanatta.
Now, let's look at some of the key players in the team.
The captain, Brandon Yip, is a Canadian-Chinese who has played in the NHL for 6 seasons with the Colorado Avalanche, Nashville Predators and Phoenix Coyotes.
The goalie, Jeremy Smith, is an American goalie who played one season in the NHL with the Colorado Avalanche. Smith has also played 11 seasons in the AHL (American Hockey League) for Milwaukee, SpringField, Providence, Iowa, San Antonio, Charlotte and Bridgeport.
Aspiring defenseman Ryan Sproul, is a Canadian born athlete who has played in the NHL for 3 seasons with the New York Rangers and the Detroit Red Wings.
21 year old Ying Rudi is a professional ice hockey player born and raised in China, he has played 3 seasons with Kunlun (Ying Rudi is actually a descendant of the Qing Dynasty Royal Family).
Moving on, let's explore some of the controversies surrounding the Chinese National Team. (before I start this paragraph, I just want to note that I am trying to be as neutral as possible) There are two underlying problems with the team.
Some players are not Chinese.
Of the 25 players in the team, 19 of them were either born or raised outside of China. That means that 76% of the team is composed of foreign players (eleven Canadians, six Chinese, seven Americans, and a Russian to be exact). This raised A LOT of eyebrows. There are a few reasons why China might have resorted to international players.
Competition, the playing field was just too high in Group A/1 and the team would get trashed. More on that later.
Lack of players, since China is not exactly an ice hockey hotbed it would be hard to find professional players to compete in the games.
This might be a turning point in how the Olympic Committee views foreign recruits.
Officials are turning a blind eye to let China into Group A/1
It usually is protocol to let the team who is hosting the Winter Olympics a guaranteed entry into the games and it only seems fair as the host country is spending billions to build those facilities. The Chinese administration on the other hand is abusing this rule. The Chinese ice hockey team is obviously out of their water when it comes to going against strong teams such as Canada, Finland or America. It would just result in a bunch of embarrassing losses. To back this case up, I made a table detailing the stats of the MEN'S team:
With these stats, we can determine that the team had a 0% winning rate and was routinely paired with teams six times their skill (based on the 2021 IIHF team rankings https://www.iihf.com/en/worldranking). Overall, with all of this information I think that we can all agree that any reasonable person would notice the rankings and past history and put China in group B/2 or C/3.
To end all this on a high note, I am going to present a few good things about having foreign prospects in a Chinese National Ice Hockey team. Firstly, having your National Ice Hockey Team mainly composed of foreign players will help raise cultural awareness because those players will bring their habits and beliefs to the team and young people in China who watch the games will learn about traditions around the world. Next, having a successful ice hockey team (because of their foreign prospects) would help promote Ice Hockey in China. How? Well, with people seeing the newfound success that the foreign prospects bring to the team they will naturally begin to learn the uncommon sport of ice hockey in China (this is backed up by the fact that only a few thousand people have ever played the game in China before). As a ice hockey player who has played Ice Hockey for more than 6 years in Hong Kong I can verify that playing Ice Hockey can help strengthen friendships, grow core and body muscles, boost up hand-eye coordination and more. It can also be a hobby that lets you travel the world for tournaments. For example, I have been to multiple countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Canada for Ice hockey tournaments.
Ice Hockey is a wonderful sport and is full of exciting experiences, (read my article on Ice Hockey if you are interested) but this event just shows how a sport can be manipulated into gaining popularity and to save face. My final opinion is that while being Chinese, I don't support this practice. Finding foreign players to play for your own team is setting a bad role model and is also not authentic. I really hope that the Chinese National team will find an alternative in future events but I really don’t have that much hope…
Thanks for reading and follow this blog if you are a fan of my articles! Until next time!
-Trevor
Nice article, thx for sharing.
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