Shanghai (AFP)

Deprived of its superstar Sun Yang, suspended for doping, China remains ambitious for the Tokyo Olympics and is keen to look good with its Japanese rival, a few months before the Winter Olympics-2022 which will take place in Beijing.

The most populous country on the planet will send to Tokyo an as always plethora of delegation of 777 people, including 431 athletes.

But the Asian giant will have to compose without its biggest star, the swimmer Sun Yang, triple Olympic champion, suspended last month - four years and three months - by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) for the destruction of a vial of his blood during an unannounced doping control in 2018.

Without Sun Yang, China will want to wash away the affront of Rio in 2016: when it had arrived at the top of the medal table during "its" Olympics in Beijing in 2008 and was still second four years more in London -2012, it had slipped to third place, behind the United States and Great Britain.

With 26 gold medals "only", Chinese athletes had harvested in Brazil their worst harvest in two decades.

If China has no big name known abroad, it nevertheless brings an armada of athletes capable of gleaning numerous medals in diving, table tennis and weightlifting.

Chinese media have even presented the divers as a "dream team" capable of winning the eight titles at stake.

- Japanese rival -

Among the other Chinese hopes, the women's volleyball team (already crowned in Rio) will be carried by Zhu Ting, and the young swimmer Zhang Yufei, nicknamed "the new queen" after her five titles at the recent national championships, will be closely followed. .

While arriving at the top of the medal table is always a source of pride, the fact that the Games are being held at the home of the historic Japanese rival, who invaded China in the last century, adds a bit of spice.

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In addition, due to the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics due to the coronavirus pandemic, only six months will separate them from the Beijing Winter Olympics, still scheduled for next February.

As soon as the closing ceremony is over, all eyes will be on these Olympics-2022 and in particular on how the organizers plan to reconcile the competitions with the restrictions linked to the epidemic.

Ma Bowen, a Chinese blogger with 800,000 subscribers on the Weibo social network, predicts that China will finish second in the medal table, behind the United States.

According to him, the performance of the Chinese will be better in the Japanese capital than in Rio, because they will find there a more familiar East Asian environment, allowing them to feel more comfortable.

- Corridor -

Like their foreign counterparts, Chinese athletes have suffered many restrictions due to the pandemic.

Most of them only played in national competitions and carried out their training in secure "bubbles".

The women's football team, which miraculously qualified in April against South Korea after a tortuous qualifying campaign, badly affected by the Covid, should generate particular interest in China.

The "Steel Roses" had in particular been forced to perform training ... in the hallway of the hotel where they were confined, during a trip to Australia at the start of the epidemic.

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As a sign of fate, against South Korea, the qualification goal was scored by Wang Shuang (ex-player of PSG), from the city of Wuhan (central China) where the epidemic had started end of 2019.

© 2021 AFP