Meng Guanliang

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is a Chinese name; the family name is Meng.

Men's flatwaer canoeing
Olympic medal record
Gold	2004 Athens	C-2 500 m

Meng Guanliang (simplified Chinese: 孟关良, born January 24, 1977 in Zhejiang) is a Chinese flatwater canoer. He won the Canadian canoe C-2 500 m gold medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Meng became Chinese champion for the first time at the age of twenty. He has won a total of five gold medals at the Asian Championships (1998, 1999 (x3) and 2002).

His best world championship performance came in 2003 in Gainesville, USA. Meng reached two individual finals, finishing in fifth place in the C1 500 m and sixth in the 200 m.

For the 2004 season he formed a C2 partnership with Yang Wenjun. On their first international appearance together in Komatsu, Japan, they shocked observers by posting a 500m time of 1:40.27. Then, in June, they won a World Cup race in Duisburg to establish themselves as one of the favourites for an Olympic medal.

At the Olympic Games in Athens, they were drawn in the toughest heat alongside all the main medal contenders. They won the heat in a time of 1:38.916, almost a full second ahead of Cubans Rojas and Balceiro. The final was much closer with less than a second separating the first eight contenders but Meng and Yang again headed the Cuban pair to win the gold medal - China's first in the sport.

Meng is 182 cm (6'0") tall and weighs 88 kg (194 lb).