Gu Ailing Photo: VCG

There are 109 gold medals on offer at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games and the big question is how many will the hosts win at home?

China's traditional strongholds have been on the ice - with 13 of its 14 golds coming from skating events. For the 2022 Games, China is also hopeful of medaling in short track, figure skating, skiing aerials, halfpipe and speed skating, observers said. 

Chief among the medal hopes is China's freeski superstar Eileen Gu Ailing, the 18-year-old who is tipped to be the face of the Beijing Games.

The recent snow season which began in October brought forth strong results for Gu, who has been tipped to be a medal shot in all three of the freestyle skiing events in the Chinese capital.

Gu had already had a breakout 2020-21 World Cup season. She then backed it up with an even bigger season in 2021-22, adding more World Cup wins to golds at her debut X Games - where she became the first rookie to win three medals - and World Championships. 

She is going for three golds in ­Beijing, which could represent a huge upturn in fortunes for the country's freestyle skiers - they won three medals but no golds in South Korea four years ago.

Gu is not the only free skier to fly the flag for China ahead of the Beijing Games. The four-time Olympian Xu Mengtao won an aerial World Cup crown in the build-up to Beijing, as did Kong Fanyu. China is being tipped for a medal in freestyle skiing's mixed team aerials, a new event at the Winter Games.

Elsewhere, since the return of Chinese athletes this season, there were huge results for snowboard team members such as Pyeongchang silver medalist Cai Xuetong and Liu Jiayu, both of whom are featuring at their fourth Winter Olympics. Teenager Su Yiming, 17, became the first Chinese man to win a big air snowboard World Cup title, while Yang Wenlong was the world's first snowboarder to land a quad cork 1980.

The ice is expected to be an even more important area of medal success for the hosts.

Speed skaters such as Wu Dajing and Fan Kexin have also set out their desire to be in the medal conversation at home, with Wu winning a World Cup leg to seal qualification just as teammate Ren Ziwei did. They are hoping to leave with more than the one gold they secured in South Korea while Team China are tipped to top the podium in short track speed skating's mixed team relay.

Wu Dajing Photo: VCG

As for figure skating, Sui Wenjing and Han Cong are tipped to go one better than they did in Pyeongchang, where they were beaten to gold by the smallest of margins - just 0.43 points. They have tasted success on the circuit in recent months as did fellow Chinese pair Peng Cheng and Jin Yang, while they will be ably supported by the likes of Jin Boyang, who finished fourth in South Korea four years ago.

Winter sports ambition

China has never won a Winter Olympic medal in some of the events - alpine skiing, biathlon, bobsleigh, cross-country skiing, ice hockey, luge, Nordic combined, skeleton or ski jumping - but that could change.

"Beijing 2022 has boosted the competitiveness of Chinese winter sports," Li Yingchuan, deputy director of China's General Administration of Sport, told domestic media in a recent interview. 

Ren Ziwei Photo: VCG

Success has already been secured, as seen with skeleton athlete Geng Wenqiang, who won China's first World Cup title in Austria in November. Geng only took up the sport in 2015 - the same year that China was awarded the right to host the Winter Games.

History suggests that China, as with any host of the Winter Olympics, could ordinarily expect a medal boost at their own Games. 

"Generally, host nations have been able to improve their medal counts over preceding games, often significantly," Olympic metadata company Gracenote reported. "In fact, five of the last nine host nations have won at least twice as many medals than they managed at the previous Winter Games." 

Gracenote have tipped China for a record-breaking Games in their most recent Virtual Medal Table, launched to mark the 30-day countdown to Beijing 2022.

Chinese athletes are now expected to win six golds among 11 total medals - a five-medal jump from the results predicted on the October edition of the Virtual Medal Table. 

If China can live up to that, it will be their greatest Games since the record five they won at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. 

If Chinese athletes can upset history and the odds with medals in unexpected events - and nothing is impossible as Australian short-track speed skater Steven Bradbury showed us with his unexpected gold in Salt Lake City in 2002 - the hosts could go even better.