Exclusive: What It's Actually Like Inside Team China

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Zhao Jinhong has four straight international wins to her name, and she hates when her teammates accuse her of wearing fake Nikes.

Shi Zhiyong is a two-time Olympic Champion. He needed an entourage of six physical therapists to keep him going.

Head coach Yu Jie is famously icy at international competitions. Back home, he makes a point to invite his athletes for tea on a regular basis. 

Most people only know Team China’s weightlifters by their larger-than-life public image—an image, ironically, that’s been crafted almost entirely by foreign fans, and one that often mystifies the athletes themselves. 

For the first time in 31 years, China will host the World Weightlifting Championships this October. The world’s most dominant weightlifting team of the modern era finds itself on the back foot as a resurgent Democratic People’s Republic of Korea threatens their sovereignty. 

For the Chinese, everything is on the line in Ningbo. We spent weeks with a former rehabilitation consultant to learn everything about the machinery that has powered Team China to international dominance for the past two decades.

Dr. Stéphane Gregory, DC, HBSc-Kin., worked in China from December 2018 to July 2026 as Director of Sports Rehabilitation in Guangxi, and, periodically, as a rehabilitation consultant for Team China's international roster.

“I never saw rehab as separate from performance,” Stéphane tells us. “I wanted to understand how to solve athletes’ problems without disconnecting them from their sport.” 

Stéphane was recruited through a professional connection—not for weightlifting specifically. During his tenure at the Guangxi Sport Bureau’s Scientific Training Center, Stéphane’s colleagues slowly pulled him deeper into China’s weightlifting industry.

“I happened to meet one of the performance coaches working with coach Yu Jie, who agreed to let me examine Tian Tao after he wasn’t selected for Tokyo. I flew to Beijing to meet him, and it ended up being a pivotal moment for my career. Tian himself told me I fixed his knee.” 

Afterward, Stéphane was brought in periodically to assist China’s best athletes throughout the Paris qualification cycle. Beyond Tian, Stéphane worked with Shi Zhiyong, Liang Xiaomei, Jiang Huihua, Zhao Jinhong, Zhao Jinlan, Li Wenwen, Liu Huanhua, and Lu Xiaojun.

Below is a transcript of several conversations between Stéphane and Weightlifting House throughout the spring and summer. This interview has been edited for clarity. 

Weightlifting House (WH): Do you remember your first day on the job?

Stéphane Gregory (SG): “It was extremely intimidating in Guangxi. A lot of the athletes there came from smaller villages. I was basically the first foreigner most of them had ever seen. People followed me everywhere I went. They put me to work in this old hospital, in a ‘clinic’ about the size of a small bedroom. I would be treating athletes there while the room was packed with doctors watching.

That said, the overall vibe in Guangxi was great. The atmosphere is warm and social once you settle in. Their weightlifting hall was loud, supportive, and full of personality.

My first day with the national team was very different. National sports teams have foreign experts hired for consulting work all the time—in my first week, I remember seeing 4-6 different people assess Shi Zhiyong. Nobody there is impressed by credentials. You have to prove yourself, quickly.”

WH: What did you struggle with?

SG: “The language barrier was huge, of course. In elite sports in China, everything depends on lines of communication. It’s not enough for me, or the athlete I’m working with, to understand the problem.”

WH: Can you give an example?

SG: “These weightlifters have teams around them; doctors, therapists, masseurs, all from their home province, who operate alongside the national team’s staff. Even when I could get everyone to agree to a plan in a meeting, they’d often walk away and go right back to doing what they personally believe is best.”

WH: How’d you get around that?

SG: “Yilin Yang (@squatjerkjournalist) was incredibly valuable in helping to bridge the language gap. But, for example, I was working with Chen Lijun on a triceps injury. From my perspective, it was obvious that isolated triceps work was needed, but the provincial doctor disagreed. 

Rather than arguing in circles, I had to make the problem visible. At that point, Chen was snatching around 100KG, but he could not do a single repetition of a barbell triceps extension. This is how collaboration works in China—you cannot tell them the answer. You often need to set things up so they arrive at the conclusion themselves.” 

WH: You said you started working with the national team around Tokyo. Did COVID protocols affect their operations? 

SG: “It varied. In China, many of the ‘sport bases’ are live-in complexes. The athletes live, eat, train, and do their rehab on-site, so it was easy to switch to a fully contained system in Guangxi. But in Beijing, with the national team, things were much more severe. 

Lockdowns were strictly enforced. The quality of life on base was much worse. Every time I was brought in, I was put into quarantine until I passed multiple tests. And I think I got relatively favorable treatment compared to most outsiders.” 

WH: How would you explain the Chinese system to someone who knows nothing about it?

SG: “Sport in China is a complex beast. Talent is identified early on through testing at local schools; anthropometric profiling, jumping tests, and, now, AI-supported evaluation. Children are funneled into county, city, and then provincial systems. These are, essentially, boarding schools.”

WH: How do they use AI?

SG: “It’s outside my area of expertise. I only know about it because I’ve witnessed some of the meetings about it in Guangxi. The general goal is to figure out how AI can improve different parts of their system. 

China has historically relied on a ‘champion model.’ They study the characteristics of their best athletes, from injury patterns to physical qualities, and then work backward to identify those same traits in youngsters. They believe AI can help expand the scale of this process, rather than relying solely on scouts and personal observation.”

WH: How many students are we talking about?

SG: “Some county-level programs may have only a few dozen athletes. Cities may have hundreds. So, across a province, there are thousands of athletes in the pipeline. The provincial teams then select the most promising athletes in each sport. That’s where things become more serious.

Guangxi alone has over 1,000 athletes coming up across 55 sports. There are 40 to 50 weightlifting prospects—aspirants who hope to be selected for the national team—in development there. And there are 31 provinces or distinct regions in China.” 

WH: And they all aspire to national team selection?

SG: “Culturally and structurally, the province is still the athlete’s primary home. They’re almost being ‘lent’ to the national team. That’s why, at national camps, there are still provincial staff present, all with very particular interests in protecting and supporting their athletes. It creates a lot of complexity and, sometimes, a fair amount of friction.” 

WH: What kind of friction?

SG: “Rivalries, but not in the way most people think. Provincial identity is strong in the Chinese system. Because athletes are developed by their provinces and then ‘acquired’ by the national team, tension and politicking can persist.

Athletes and coaches from different provinces are generally friendly. But during international team selection, the atmosphere tightens. And if you develop a selfish reputation for being more concerned with making one selection, or winning one event, it sticks with you. It’s not a good way to survive in the system.”

WH: Is there merit to the rumor that Lu Xiaojun’s drug pop before Paris came from a tip provided by a rival province?

SG: “I’ve heard that rumor, but I don’t have direct knowledge and don’t want to speculate. What I can say is that it was very surreal when it happened. One day, Lu just wasn’t on the platform, and nobody was happy about it. I think that was the first time I saw head coach Yu Jie look truly serious.”

WH: Did Lu expect to win in Paris when he started his post-Tokyo comeback?

SG: “I can’t say for sure, since I was still getting to know him when he left the team. What I can say is he seemed very serious about rebuilding his pull. It didn’t look like something he was doing on a whim.”

WH: Coach Yu has a reputation. What’s he like?

SG: “Behind his public image, Yu is very caring and human. He used to invite athletes for tea in their free time and just talk with them in a relaxed way, checking in on their lives and building trust. 

He always came across to me as someone who genuinely wanted the best for his athletes. His retirement this year was significant, but of course, the system is bigger than any one person. Yu will remain influential within his province. My impression is that people don’t see it as a crisis.” 

WH: People say the Chinese system has ways of avoiding drug suspensions. How often did you see WADA agents conducting tests in-country?

SG: “This is a sensitive question. I was not involved in anti-doping administration, so I don’t want to speculate. Before major competitions, the weightlifters were regularly updated on WADA compliance. There was also a very strong culture of caution around taking supplements and medication.

What I can speak to confidently relating to these rumors is that outsiders simply underestimate how much training history elite Chinese weightlifters accumulate before the world ever sees them. 

If an athlete starts serious training at age 12, and debuts internationally around 20, you’re looking at 2,500 training days before they go out on stage. And that’s a conservative estimate—most of those days involve more than one training session. Every session is coached, structured, and highly competitive.

During the Paris qualification cycle, the team only had one vacation longer than three days, and that was right after the National Games. When people see these athletes for the first time, it’s easy to see a mirage of drug use. People don’t see a lifetime of training condensed into a few years.”

WH: Is Team China aware of their international prestige in weightlifting?

SG: “Honestly, not really. Those who do know are more confused by it than anything else. For most of them, this is their job. It’s not always something they do out of passion. Once you spend time with them, that larger-than-life image starts to fade. They have pain, pressure, insecurities, and routines like anyone else.”

WH: How do you feel about it?

SG: “I’ve never really been driven by how famous or successful an athlete is. I’ve worked with world-famous weightlifters and ones nobody outside their province will ever hear of. Both individuals are equally devoted, and I am equally fulfilled by working with them.

I do think internal awareness is changing a bit. Platforms like Douyin, a Chinese short-form video platform like TikTok, are helping the weightlifters realize how much attention they get overseas.” 

WH: Is the team worried about North Korea?

SG: "It's not quite a panic, but the main effect of DPRK's comeback was on how China selects and rosters for competitions. The coaching staff have a lot of respect for North Korea's athletes. They're spoken about with similar reverence to how China views its competitors back in the '90s—incredibly hardworking, disciplined, and free from distractions.

The athletes tend to stay focused on their own lifting. They worry less about international performances and more about doing their job well to stay 'in the system.'"

WH: How deep is Team China’s international bench?

SG: “The bench is deep. In Guangxi alone, there are multiple female weightlifters in the lightweight classes who are capable of making international podiums. They’re just waiting for their chance.

I remember watching the Paris Olympics with Zhao Jinhong. She showed me a video on her phone of a lift that was several kilos above what Hou Zhihui hit on stage. But the interesting part is there’s much less of an ‘I should be there instead’ attitude than you’d expect. If anything, athletes often grumble about having to leave their province when called up to the national team. It’s said jokingly, of course, but it does show where their loyalty sits.” 

WH: How does their demeanor change when they travel internationally?

SG: “They’re more timid, mostly because of the language and cultural gaps. Coach Yu is actually a good example—he’s actually very funny, but acts serious and grumpy when the team travels. 

But at home, the atmosphere amongst the national team is more relaxed than people might expect. Not in the sense that standards are low, but it’s not some military-style intensity the way people sometimes imagine. There’s a lot of joking and a lot of feeling-based coaching. Lots of autoregulation.” 

WH: What do people misunderstand about Team China? 

SG: “Honestly, it’s that weightlifting is just their job. From a young age, they’re moved onto a training base, where they are paid to effectively work for the team for most of their lives. They get very little time off. Even in the evenings, they’re often getting medical treatment or doing recovery work.

I think people in the West sometimes compare themselves to these athletes without appreciating how different the lifestyle is. It’s not just that they train hard. Their whole lives are organized around training from a very young age. Westerners cannot understand it.

When people compare themselves to Chinese weightlifters, I hope it is done with an understanding of just how much work went into what they see on stage. I would love for more fans to appreciate how much work goes on behind the scenes.”