Olympic champ Wang Meng suspended from training
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Xinhua, July 30, 2011
Five days after bursting into physical conflict with team manager, China's four-time winter Olympics gold medalist Wang Meng was suspended from training on Friday.
Zhao Yinggang, head of China's Winter Sports Administration confirmed on Friday that the 26-year-old Wang and her national teammate Liu Xianwei, who was also involved in the conflict with team manager Wang Chunlu, were both suspended from training by the Chinese short-track speed-skating team and will face further punishment.
Wang Chunlu will temporarily rest at home and Liu Hao, vice director of the Short-track department of the Winter Sports Administration, will work as the acting team manager during Wang Chunlun's absence.
According to Zhao, the training suspension is just an interim castigation. And with the investigation going on, a final punishment will be announced soon.
Late on Sunday night, Wang Meng, accompanied with another Olympic gold medalist Zhou Yang, as well as teammates Liu Qiuhong, Liu Xianwei, Han Jialiang and Liang Wenhao, returned to their training camp in Qingdao late and drunk, and she was harshly reproved by team manager Wang Chunlu.
The conflict soon turned physical as Wang Meng punched Wang Chunlu as the team manager accused her of violating team rules.
Some of the coaching staff pulled the two sides apart. The fiery-tempered Wang Meng continued to smash furniture in her dormitory room and accidentally injured both of her hands, before being sent to hospital and receiving ten stitches to her wounds.
The other four involved team-members, namely Zhou Yang, Liu Qiuhong, Han Jialiang and Liang Wenhao, were allowed to keep training while reflecting on their wrong-doings. They have also been forced to hand over written introspections as a punishment.
Before announcing the preliminary punishment, the China's Winter Sports Administration released a statement through Xinhua on Thursday to apologize to the public for the impact of the incident.
"The incident jeopardized the image of China's short-track speed-skating team as well as the image of China's winter sports athletes," read the statement. "The incident uncovered the problem of oversight and impatience in our daily management of the team. As the supervisor, the Winter Sports Administration should take the main blame."
It was not the first time that the short-track team hit the headlines for their inappropriate behaviors.
Wang Meng, China's most famous Winter Olympic athlete who won three Olympic golds in Vancouver and one in Turin, was involved in a scrimmage in Lijiang, Southwest China last June while the team was attending a summer camp.
Wang claimed on her Weibo, a twitter-like net-working website, that her teammates and she were beaten up by local security guards during a night out in Lijiang, while local police accused them of making too much noise after midnight, which caused the security guards to step in.
