| Olympic medal record | ||
|---|---|---|
| Women’s short track speed skating | ||
| Competitor for China | ||
| Silver | 1992 Albertville | 500 m |
Li Yan (Chinese: 李琰, born September 8, 1968) is a female Chinese short track speed skater and coach. She competed in the 1988 and 1992 Winter Olympics for China. She has coached for Slovakia, the United States and China.
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She was born in the city of Mudanjiang in Heilongjiang Province.[1] She attended school on the Wenquanling collective farm, which had a speed skating team.[2] From that team she was recruited to attend a sports school in Jiamusi in 1979. According to her coach in Jiamusi, He Peicheng, Li trained very hard and could withstand extremely cold conditions. "She would cry but she would finish all of her exercises."[2] In 1982, she finished second at a national youth speed skating competition.[2]
Li joined China's national short track speed skating team in 1987. In 1988, when short track speed skating first appeared at the Winter Olympics in Calgary as a demonstration sport, she competed and won the 1000m and finished third in the 500m and 1500m events.
In 1992, after short skating sport became an official Olympic sport in Alberville, she won the silver medal in the 500m event, finishing 0.04 s behind Cathy Turner of the United States. It was the third ever medal for China at the Winter Olympic Games.[3] Li was also a member of the Chinese women's short track relay team that finished eighth.
Li retired from the sport after 14 years and attended Dongbei University of Finance and Economics in Dalian where she majored in international finance.[4] She said she picked the major because the international nature of the subject matter meant meant she could study English and finance was a popular major at the time. After graduation, she worked for the Dalian tax bureau for four and half years.
After four and half years at the tax bureau, she received a telephone call from a former coach about a short track coaching exchange program with Slovakia. Other Chinese coaches had passed up the opportunity, but Li agreed "after thinking about it for 10 seconds."[4] She became the coach of the Slovakian national coach in 1999 and led the team to qualify for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
After the 2002 Winter Olympics, she became the coach for the Austrian shot track speed skating team. Less one year later, in 2003 April, she became a coach for the United States short track speed skating team. In 2005, she was named as the Coach of the Year by U.S. Speedskating after guiding the U.S. men's team to an eighth place finish at the World Cup and the women's team to a sixth place finish.[5] The team combined to win 30 World Cup medals. At the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Li coached Apolo Anton Ohno to gold in the men's 500m.
In 2006 she was hired to coach the short track speed skating team in her native China. She helped refocus the talented but temperamental Wang Meng and developed a young star in Zhou Yang. At the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Wang won the 500m and 1000m events, Zhou took the 1500m, and the Chinese women's team won the 3000m short track relay, after the South Korean team was disqualified for impeding. The Chinese women's team completed an unprecedented sweep of all four short track speed skating events at the Olympics. The four gold medals her team won made Li the most decorated Chinese coach in one Olympic games.[1]
Following the games, she was awarded a four-year contract extension as coach of the Chinese women's short track speed skating team.[6]
In 1995, Li Yan married Tang Guoliang, a former Chinese skiier. They have one daughter and maintained a residence in Colorado. Her family is moving back to China in 2010 following her contract extension with the Chinese national team.