China’s Top 10 Sports News in 2012
BEIJING, Dec. 27 (Xinhua) — Following are the top 10 sports news stories of China in the year of 2012 selected by Xinhua News Agency:
– Chess world champion Hou Yifan claimed a historical victory over Hungarian Judit Polgar, the strongest female player of all time, on January 31, 2012 in their first over-the-board encounter in Gibraltar.
The 17-year-old Chinese grandmaster had white and won an endgame in round seven of the 10th Gibraltar Chess Festiva over Polgar, who had never lost to female player in 20 years.
– With the help of former NBA superstar Stephon Marbury, the Beijing Ducks knocked off title holders Guangdong Tigers 124-121 on March 30 to wrap up a 4-1 victory at the best-of-seven CBA finals for their first-ever Chinese championship.
Beijing Ducks players celebrate their first-ever CBA title after beating defending Guangdong Hongyuan in the best-of-seven final series in Beijing on March 30, 2012. [Photo/Xinhua]
– Feng Shanshan fired a bogey-free five-under par 67 on June 10 to capture the LPGA Championship by two strokes, becoming the first Chinese golfer to win a major title.
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– Two former Chinese soccer heads were sentenced on June 13 to 10 and a half years in prison for taking bribes, marking the culmination of a campaign to eliminate graft in the Chinese professional soccer leagues, which had been afflicted with match-fixing, gambling and other illicit behavior.
Xie Yalong, former deputy chief of China’s football association, and his successor Nan Yong, were each fined 200,000 yuan. |
– Team China created another Olympic success in London 2012, grabbing 38 gold, 27 silver and 23 bronze medals for the second place on both the medal and gold tally, a second-to-best result only next to that of the 2008 Games on home soil, while their Paralympic counterparts took 95 gold, 71 silver and 65 bronze to top the table.
– Sun Yang and Ye Shiwen, each with two Olympic gold medals, led the Chinese swimmers to major breakthroughs at London Olympic Games.
China registered its best ever Olympic swimming result in London by finishing second overall, only after the United States, with 10 medals, and went on to finish runner-up at the short course world championships in Istanbul.
– China decided in October to launch a three-year program to monitor students’ health and fitness from 2013. The monitoring will be conducted by a third-party institution and the results will be released to the students’ parents. For schools and regions whose students’ health keeps declining for three consecutive years, they will be lowly graded in evaluation of educational competence.
– Guangzhou Evergrande became the first team ever to have defended its Chinese Super League title on October 27 after beating Liaoning Hongyun 1-0 at home in the penultimate round.
Three weeks later, Evergrande beat Guizhou Renhe 4-2 in the China’s FA Cup final, claiming the second title of the season with an aggregate score of 5-3.
– A first-ever Asian branch of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) was established in Shanghai on November 12.
The Shanghai branch is tasked with resolving sports-related disputes.
– Chinese boxer Xiong Chaozhong won over Mexican Javier “Demonio” Martinez in Kunming, Southwest China, on November 24 for the vacant World Boxing Council minimum weight title.
The 29-year-old former WBC Asian super flyweight champion won a unanimous 12-round decision, becoming China’s first professional world champion in the sport.
Natural Disasters Leave 1,338 Dead in 2012
BEIJING, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) — Natural disasters left 1,338 people dead and another 192 missing in China last year, according to an official statement released Sunday.
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Disasters affected 290 million people, destroyed 906,000 houses, severely damaged 1.46 million houses and caused direct economic losses of 418.55 billion yuan (66.55 billion U.S. dollars) on the Chinese mainland, according to a joint statement from the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the office of the National Committee for Disaster Reduction.
Over 200 county-level areas were each hit by more than 10 natural disasters last year, the statement said. |
Floods, geological disasters, typhoons and hail were the major adverse conditions seen in China last year, and droughts, earthquakes, snowstorms, sandstorms and forest fires also occurred, it said.
According to the statement, the country’s western regions were hit by multiple earthquakes.
In 2012, the Chinese mainland was jolted by 16 earthquakes of magnitude 5 or above, and all occurred in the western regions, the statement said.
The numbers of casualties and damaged houses in southwest China, which saw a severe drought followed by several rounds of rainstorms and earthquakes in 2012, accounted for about 40 percent of the nationwide total, the statement said.
The statement also noted that rescue and relief efforts were more difficult to carry out for disasters in the country’s least-developed areas.