Relay gold cold comfort for Team China

If they are taking their home Winter Asiad as a critical test for next year's Olympics as seriously as they claimed, China's short-track speed skaters should leave Harbin with alarm bells ringing loudly in their heads.

Ignoring some unexpected, tiny errors, due to the not-so-ideal track conditions at the venue and body contact that is part of the sport, Team China has no excuses at all for its poorer-than-expected campaign at Harbin 2025, where it was totally outperformed on home ice by its close neighbor the Republic of Korea, arguably the world's most decorated program in the sport.

Roared on by a boisterous home crowd at the Heilongjiang Ice Training Center, the Chinese women's squad overtook a surging Korean quartet in the final lap in the 3,000m relay Final A on Sunday to snatch the host's only team gold in Harbin, offering fans cold comfort after it failed to deliver on its hefty pre-Games ambitions.

The Chinese men capped off the Games' short-track program with a bronze medal in the 5,000m relay, where it originally finished bottom in the four-team final A, but was promoted to the podium following a penalty that disqualified the second-placed Koreans for an illegal obstruction.

Despite that blip, ROK's speedsters dominated the short-track medal standings with six golds among its total haul of 13 from nine events, while Team China settled for a distant second place, with two gold medals among a total eight, putting it ahead of Kazakhstan with its sole gold medal.

The thin harvest from Harbin, the cradle of China's skating world champions, has provided a sobering reality check for the Chinese squad that, perhaps, has to reevaluate its goals for Milano-Cortina 2026, where mighty Western powers, such as the Netherlands, Canada and the host Italy, will undoubtedly make the hunt for gold extremely hard.