- Meng Guanliang
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This is a Chinese name; the family name is Meng.
Olympic medal record Men's flatwater canoeing Gold 2004 Athens C-2 500 m Gold 2008 Beijing C-2 500 m Meng Guanliang (simplified Chinese: 孟关良; traditional Chinese: 孟關良; pinyin: Mèng Guānliáng, born January 24, 1977 in Shaoxing, Zhejiang) is a Chinese flatwater canoer who has competed since 1998. Participating in two Summer Olympics, he won the Canadian canoe C-2 500 m gold medal both in 2004 and 2008.
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 C-1 500 m and sixth in the C-1 200 m.
For the 2004 season he formed a C-2 partnership with Yang Wenjun. On their first international appearance together in Komatsu, Japan, they shocked observers by posting a C-2 500 m 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 2004 Summer Olympics 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. They repeated their Olympic victory in Beijing four years later despite their boat capsizing at the finish line after their win.
Meng is 182 cm (6'0") tall and weighs 88 kg (194 lb).
References
Olympic Canoeing Champions in Men's C-2 500 m 1976: Soviet Union (Serhei Petrenko, Aleksandr Vinogradov) • 1980: Hungary (László Foltán, István Vaskuti) • 1984: Yugoslavia (Matija Ljubek, Mirko Nišović) • 1988: Soviet Union (Viktor Reneysky, Nicolae Juravschi) • 1992: Unified Team (Dmitri Dovgalenok, Aleksandr Maseikov) • 1996: Hungary (György Kolonics, Csaba Horváth) • 2000: Hungary (Ferenc Novák, Imre Pulai) • 2004 – 2008: China (Meng Guanliang, Yang Wenjun)
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