Olympic champion Yang Yang will head a largest-ever Chinese team to compete at next month's Turin winter Games, the country's sports authorities said here on Wednesday.

China fields a delegation of 151 members, of which 76 are athletes. They will enter nine of the 17 sports at the Feb. 10-26 event in the Italian city.

"It is China's largest-ever team to a winter Olympics since we made debut in the winter games in 1980," said Xiao Tian, deputy director of the State General Administration of Sport, at a ceremony held Wednesday to mark the founding of the Chinese delegation.

A Summer Games powerhouse, China is still a winter sports fledgling. China didn't end its winter Olympic gold draught until the Salt Lake City Games in 2002 when Yang Yang took two short track speed skating titles.

When asked about China's gold-medal target in Turin, Xiao said: "We wish that we could win all events that we enter, but it's obviously unrealistic."

"Hopefully, we could surpass the previous games' result of two golds," he added.

China pins its medal hopes in short-track speed skating, speed skating, figure skating and women's freestyle aerials.

Hi Nina is the current leader in the the women's freestyle aerials World Cup rankings, with teammates Xu Nannan and Guo Xinxin both in top ten.

Wang Meng is a hot favorite for women's short track speed skating events as the 21-year-old remained unbeaten in all 500m World Cup races this season, and Zhang Dan/Zhang Hao, the Grand Prix finals runners-up last year, will be serious title contender in the pairs figure skating.

More than 5,000 athletes are expected to compete at the Turin Olympics. A total of 84 gold medals are up for grabs.

Source: Xinhua