National team rowers shine at China's spring championship heats

HANGZHOU, East China, April 4 (Xinhua) -- After two-month winter training, national team rowers showed their good form Friday in the heats of the 2008 Spring China National Rowing Championships in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province.

Xu Dongxiang, gold medalist at the 2006 World Rowing Championships, finished first in the 2-kilometer lightweight women's single sculls in 8 minutes and 8.74 seconds. She easily went to the semifinals on Saturday.

Xu got a boost to her morale Thursday in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics when she won by a huge margin in the 8-kilometer lightweight women's single sculls.

"I was rather relaxed in the race," said Xu, one of the best known Chinese rowers. "I've made noticeable improvement after the winter training in the southwestern plateau province of Yunnan."

"We trained eight hours on average during the winter training period. The training was hard and intensive," she said.

Zhang Liang, also a national team member, advanced to the semifinal of the men's single sculls in 7 minutes 20.68 seconds.

Zhang's former coach Song Liangyou said, "Zhang does not care how hard the training is and usually do anything the coach requests. We often have to persuade him to take a rest because we fear he is too tired."

Tian Jun and Huang Zhongming, 2007 world cup champions, breezed into the lightweight men's pair semifinals. "I think about how to improve my techniques all the time, as I am rather weak in the strength compared with the European pairs," Tian, 28, said, "Everybody wishes to win a gold medal and so do I."

Most young rowers from the Chinese national rowing team, especially those hopefuls to attend the 2008 Olympics, took the tournament being held more as a test of their winter training and a practice run for the Olympics.

More than 200 rowers nationwide, including dozens from the national rowing team, attended the four-day championships held in the Thousand Island Lake in the suburbs of Hangzhou.