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Gymnastics Operating Mechanism on the
Provincial Level.
There are about 15 provincial WAG teams across
China that can send a competitive team into
national games. The top 12 provincial WAG teams
in the 2009 National Games were
Shanghai,
Guangdong, Beijing, Zhejiang, Hunan, Hubei,
Guizhou, Guangxi, Yunnan, Sichuan, Jiangsu and
Shangdong. Guangdong and Shanghai, especially
Guangdong, have the best WAG provincial teams
in China. Thanks to their strong provincial
economy, the two teams are well funded, which
significantly benefits their recruiting. The two
WAG teams were loaded with talents in the last
National Games.
Like the national team, each provincial WAG team
maintains two tiers - team 1 (senior) and team 2
(junior). Each team has about 10 gymnasts,
members of national team included. Juniors in
the provincial team 2 are recruited primarily from
local sports schools. The gymnasts age ranges are
roughly 4-7 for sports school, 7-15 for provincial
team 2, and 15-20 for provincial team 1.
Girls training in the local sports school have the
sole goal of getting into the provincial teams.
Some were not able to make to their own
provincial team but recruited by other provincial
teams. Both Li Shanshan and Huang Qiushuang
were born in Hubei and trained in local sports
schools, but recruited by Guangzhou provincial
team.
As for the size of the gymnastics at sports schools,
take Shanghai as an example, there are about 10
sports schools in different districts. Those sports
schools are considered “amateur” sports schools
in the sense that the girls trained there are not
officially enlisted/salaried in provincial teams. In
early 2010, there were less than 1,000 kids in
district level gymnastics schools in shanghai;
about half of them are girls. In other words, there
were about 30-50 girls at each district-level sports
school training for gymnastics. Considering that
Shanghai is one of the best WAG team, my guess
is that around 10,000 girls train for gymnastics in
China (I couldn't find any office numbers). In
contrast, there are 5.2 million(76% female) 6 year
and older gymnastics participants in the States
according to the statistics published on USA
gymnastics website.
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