Freestyle skier Eileen Gu – or Gu Ailing as the 18-year-old is known in China – is set to be the face of her home Games and with good reason.
She is the world champion in halfpipe and slopestyle and also has a medal chance in big air.
The American-born teenager, who began representing China in 2019 after switching to her mother’s nationality, has also shown her commercial potential by modelling for high-profile brands and her intelligence with a place at Stanford University.
In their virtual medal table, data analysts Nielsen Gracenote predict she will win two golds and a bronze with China picking up a record 13 medals in total, including six golds.
“The projected medals are all in sports in which the Chinese have previously won medals – figure skating, freestyle skiing, short track, snowboard and speed skating,” said Simon Gleave, head of sports analysis at Nielsen Gracenote.
Wu Dajing will seek to defend his men’s 500m short-track title, while Ren Ziwei has won World Cup golds in the 1,000m and 1,500m and the relay teams are tipped to do well.
Short-track has provided 10 of the 13 Winter Olympic gold medals China have ever won.
Figure skating pair Sui Wenjing and Han Cong will be hoping to go one better than their 2018 silver, and speed skaters Ning Zhongyan and Gao Tingyu could be medal contenders.
A lack of international competitions during the coronavirus pandemic has made it harder to gauge form generally, but China are strong in the aerials, having won eight medals in the past three Games in the discipline. They have excellent chances of success again, including in the new mixed team aerials.
In snowboarding they have Liu Jiayu, whose 2018 halfpipe silver was China’s first medal in any Olympic snowboard discipline, and two-time halfpipe world champion Cai Xuetong.
And there could also be some surprises in some of their new sports, with many pointing to the sliding track.
“Their athletes will have let’s say 400 runs, where everybody else will have 45. So there is a huge home field advantage,” Canadian former skeleton athlete Pain, who coached the Chinese team from 2015 to 2019, told BBC Sport.
Geng Wenqiang, who won a World Cup gold in November, had been expected to be selected in the men’s skeleton team but China instead chose Yin Zheng and Yan Wengang. Neither of the women they have picked have finished higher than 15th in a senior international event.