Olympics-China can't beat Beijing gold haul in 2012 - official

By Liu Zhen

BEIJING, March 6 (Reuters) - China will not be able to top its gold medal tally from the Beijing Olympics at the London Games in 2012 and needs to focus on improving weaker sports like athletics and soccer, deputy sports minister Cui Dalin said.

The host nation excelled at last August's Beijing Games, winning 51 gold medals to leapfrog the United States (36 golds) and top the medals table for the first time.

"We won 51 gold and total 100 medals to rank top at the Beijing Olympics, which was a historic breakthrough," Cui told a meeting of the sports group of the advisory body to China's parliament.

"After this great success, how Chinese competitive sports should develop in the future and what we should do for the London Olympics has become the question.

"Are we still able to simply pursue an increase in the gold medal number? Obviously, that's impossible and not pragmatic.

"We can't relax and rest on our previous achievements ... We always have to focus on our defects."

Cui has something of a habit of downplaying China's medal chances and frequently asserted before the Beijing Games that they would not overtake the United States.

"London is not Beijing, we are no longer competing on home soil," he continued.

"How could a country that wins zero gold medals in the 47 events of track and field be called a strong power in sports? How could a country with its football as bad as China's be called a strong power in sports?

"Our target for 2012 is to fight to improve the athletics, swimming and three big balls (football, basketball, volleyball) while maintaining a certain number of golds."

Zhou Jihong, the head coach of China's diving team, reflected Cui's pessimism over the chances of repeated dominance of strong sports like her own.

"It would be extremely difficult for us to do in London the same as at the Beijing Games, as we already took seven of eight golds," she told Reuters.

"Our competitors have been improving, and there are already many strong foreign divers that are able to challenge us."

Table tennis great Deng Yaping, another member of the group, agreed that China should brace itself for a drop in gold medals in 2012.

"I think it will be difficult for us to get 51 golds in London," she told Reuters. "But we'll work really hard to keep the gap between what we achieved in Beijing and what we win in London as small as possible." (Additional reporting and writing by Nick Mulvenney; Editing by Peter Rutherford)