Alpine Skiing

As the only Asian face in the alpine skiing women's all-around competition, Chinese player Kong Fanying successfully finished the competition and came in 15th place, the best Olympic result by Team China in this event.

The 25-year-old is the first Chinese athlete to complete the women's downhill race at the Winter Olympics, and one of the rare skiers in this competition to have raced in four individual events — downhill, super-G, slalom and giant slalom.

At this Winter Olympics, Kong was one of the athletes from the Chinese delegation participating in the most events. She participated in the downhill, slalom, giant slalom, super giant slalom, five all-around individual contests and mixed team competition.

At Beijing 2022, female athletes Kong Fanying and Ni Yueming, and male athletes Xu Mingfu and Zhang Yangming participated in the discipline. Before the 24th Olympic Winter Games, China had only competed in alpine skiing at six Winter Olympics, and each time only one male and one female athlete took part.

Xu Mingfu made history at Beijing 2022 on Feb 7 by becoming the first Chinese competitor to finish an Olympic downhill competition.

The 24-year-old eventually ranked 36th with a time of 1:56.93, and although he was well off the pace at the top of the leaderboard — Switzerland's Beat Feuz clocked a winning time of 1:42.69 — Xu was still delighted with his performance on "The Rock", the course at the National Alpine Skiing Centre.

"For me, simply being able to finish the competition means I have passed the test," said Xu, adding "I had never hit a speed of 100 km/h during the Olympics" .

Xu believes his breakthrough at Beijing 2022 will help usher in a bright future for Chinese alpine skiing.

"Definitely, our future will be better and better, as we have made the first step, and we will have more chances to improve ourselves," he said.