THE BEST: Members of the Chinese men's Gymnastics Team celebrate after winning the Olympic team gold in Beijing

On August 13, the Chinese women's gymnastics team took their first Olympic gold in the Beijing Games. Led by veteran Cheng Fei, the six girl gymnasts scored 188.900 points in four events. Just the day before, the Chinese men's gymnastics team won back the Olympic gold medal that they lost four years ago in Athens. In the process China became the first country to clinch both men's and women's team gold medals in Olympic gymnastics in 16 years.

Men: making a comeback

The men's team finished fifth, its worst result in history, in the Athens Olympics. Performances riddled with errors scuppered their medal chances, and many team members thought of retiring after returning to Beijing. In that year, 24-year-old Yang Wei wanted to quit. Huang Xu, the captain, also considered to end his career. Olympic gold medalist Li Xiaopeng was seriously injured and could not train even he wanted to.

Reviewing the failure in Athens, Gao Jian, Director of the Gymnastics Management Center under the State General Administration of Sport, thought it was a series of ripple effects that came from poor preparations. Huang Yubin, head coach of the Chinese men's team, tried to persuade the veterans to stay. "Have you achieved your dreams yet? You can take advantage of your edge under the new scoring system and new rules. You can perform better if you practice more in the training," Huang said to his team.

Yang Wei returned to training and won individual all-round titles in the 2006 and 2007 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships. Huang Xu and Li Xiaopeng chose to stay, too.

"Everyday is nothing but hard training. Almost none of us had time to rest," coach Huang said when recalling the days before the Beijing Olympics. Criticisms from 17 different media organizations were hung on a wall in the gymnasium. The purpose of establishing a "wall of shame" was to remind the whole team of the crash in Athens.

Chinese gymnasts regained their dominance after two years of hard training. They overwhelmed their rivals at the 2006 World Gymnastics Championships in Aarhus, Denmark; however, their floor exercises still lacked stability, and they were also inferior to Russia and Japan on the horizontal bar. In the 2007 World Gymnastics Championships in Stuttgart, Germany, the Chinese team remarkably improved its weak points by scoring 46.175 points in the floor exercises and 47.025 points on the pommel horse. In the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, they gained all of the leading positions on the pommel horse, rings, vaulting, parallel bars and horizontal bar.

"We've been depressed for four years by the defeat in Athens. All of the athletes and coaches are eager for the team gold in the Beijing Olympics. The victory is the reward for our painstaking efforts over the past years," Huang said.

For 27-year-old Li Xiaopeng, this gold medal is more than special. It is his 15th world championship, which means that he has finally overtaken Li Ning, one of China's sports icon, who lit the cauldron of the Beijing Olympic Games, to become the Chinese gymnast with the most world titles.