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Xu Lijia, China's first Olympic sailing champion in the women's laser radial, races in the America's Cup World Series in Naples, Italy in April. Provided to China Daily

Young and inexperienced Chinese sailors are relishing the opportunity to improve as they go up against the world's elite, write Tang Zhe and Xie Chuanjiao in Qingdao, Shandong province.

It was a one-in-a-million chance for Qingdao sailor Zhang Yiran to race alongside the world's elite sailors.

Zhang, who joined the Shandong provincial sailing team in 2006, said Chinese sailors rarely have chances to compete overseas, and struggle to improve because good instruction is hard to come by.

A recruitment notice from the China Team, a challenger for the America's Cup, changed the career of the young mariner. And just a few months later, Zhang was racing with Olympic champions and sailing icons in Naples, Italy in April.

When the China Team was founded in 2005 to challenge for the America's Cup, the crew members and managing staff were all foreigners.

To develop domestic sailors and sport specialists, a Chinese management team took over the squad last June. It began recruiting in November to prepare for the Red Bull Youth America's Cup selection series in February, which requires crews to be aged 18-25 and from the team's home country.

Liu Xue, 20, Wen Zijin, 25, and Zhang joined Cheng Ying-kit, who made his China Team debut last year.

However, the team struggled to find a qualified domestic skipper and decided to postpone its plan to compete in the youth cup, then hired Australian skipper Mitch Booth to instruct the young sailors.

The 50-year-old has two Olympic medals in Tornado class, 11 World Championships and America's Cup experience, and has been involved in many sailing related activities, including the co-creation of the Extreme 40 boat.

"All the crews must be Chinese in the youth cup, but we can't create a qualified Chinese skipper instantly, because it is rich sailing experience that establishes a skipper. Therefore, we postponed our youth cup schedule to next year," said Fang Yuwen, managing director of the China Team.

The team's new lineup trained together for just over a month in Sanya, Hainan province, and trained with the AC45, the catamaran used in the tournament, for about 10 days ahead of the Naples competition. It finished last among nine teams, with a best finish of seventh.

"It's unrealistic to ask for remarkable results right now - at least we are having more Chinese young sailors in this elite competition," Fang said. "We are also expecting to include more crew in the team, at least 10 to 12 total, to provide more sailors with opportunities, to choose the best and create a good rotation."

Having first started with the original China Team, which was all western sailors, as skipper in the America's Cup in 2011, Booth said his return is a whole new challenge for him.

"The challenge is to start with really nothing, a clean sheet," Booth said while leading the squad in the Extreme Sailing Series in Qingdao from May 2-5.

"In the past, whenever I was in the America's Cup or any project, the quickest way is to find the most experienced people in our team," he said. "But now it's a completely different philosophy of trying to do an America's Cup. We start from one, and we build to get a team.

"We are racing on a very difficult boat with virtually no training time, we are racing against the best sailors in the world. To even compete in that level is a big achievement for the Chinese sailors. I am very satisfied with their performance in Naples - I couldn't imagine that happening two years ago when I first started with the China Team."

The skipper said what the Chinese most need is to keep traveling to international sailing races to gain experiences against the best teams. He wants to develop more Chinese crew, in particular a Chinese skipper.

"My ambition is to develop them to a level where I don't sail on the boat, they sail by themselves, and I will become the coach," said the Australian. "I would like to see them race with a full Chinese team at an America's Cup. It's a long way to that point, but we will try."

(China Daily 06/09/2013 page8)