NNU’ers participate in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games

The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics are in full swing. Since the official start, the games have gone smoothly and won praise from all sides. During the Winter Olympic Games, the teachers and students of NNU have been playing supporting roles by providing their own expertise and effort.

As a member of the National Cross-country Skiing Training Team, Professor Xudan Cai from the School of Sports Science and Physical Education supports the training by conducting scientific research that is mainly responsible for nutrition allocation, training load monitoring, and phased physiological function tests. “We give feedback to coaches through data to evaluate the training quality of each athlete,” Cai said in an interview with CCTV’s Focus Report. Due to China’s late entry into the sport of cross-country skiing, the athletes chosen to compete for China were pulled from other sports. Xudan Cai and other coaches have adopted a variety of innovative technologies to analyze and test athletes’ technical and physical abilities to help them improve their performance.

Changning Zhang, a graduate student in the School of Sports Science and Physical Education, was a torchbearer in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games. As a volleyball player, she won gold medals at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games and at both the 2015 and 2019 Women’s Volleyball World Cups. Zhang carried the Olympic torch in front of Dajing Gate in the Zhangjiakou competition area, conveying the Chinese spirit to the world. She said, “It’s a special honor to be able to pass the torch at the Olympic Games held at home. I feel very proud to have had such an experience. I hope the Olympic athletes will meet their goals and have their best performances yet.”