Rowing in China

The Chinese Rowing Association was founded in May 1981. In China, sport is planned on provincial level and gets financed through national and local government funds. Now, in rowing, the advantage the Chinese athletes have lies therein that they have a status as ‘fulltime-rowers’, paid by the government. However, in the general opinion, rowing is obviously not very popular or even common in China. The former team manager Wu Hau says that most rowers are merely the, “remnants of basketball and swimming.” Until now the Chinese athletes were only successful once in rowing at the Olympic Games. In Olympics 1996 in Atlanta, Cao Mianying and Zhang Xiuyun won silver medals in women’s double sculls behind Canada and before the Netherlands