Competing against British legend Victoria Pendeton, rising star Rebecca Romero and American speed specialist Jennie Reed, winning a gold for Guo has became a mission impossible.

Thus, China's first cycling gold looks more likely to come from women's mountain bike with Ren Chengyuan and Liu Ying as hopefuls.

Ren won China's first ever World Cup Series title in Switzerland last year and finished runner-up at the under-23 event of the World Championships in England.

"I am not too shy to say my goal is to win the gold medal," Ren said. "I didn't even think about competing in the Olympics three or four years ago, but all of a sudden people are telling me that I'm a gold-medal contender. It's amazing."

She was joined by teammate Liu Ying, who pocketed another World Cup title in Slovenia and won the "Good Luck Beijing" International Invitational on the Olympic track.

The pair now sit in the third and fourth on the UCI world rankings and they put China top of the national rankings for the first time after the 2007 season.

In the Laoshan Olympic course, the Chinese pair will face ferocious challenges from Russian veteran Irina Kalentieva, German Sabine Spitz and Canadian Marie-Helene Premont.

As for the road race, China also has the chance to win a medal with three women cyclists already booking their berths for the Olympics.

Under the guidance of Chinese Hong Kong coach Shen Jinkang, Chinese women cyclists shone in the international competitions, making their team to the top 13 in the UCI ranking.

"I always stress team work, and during the past one year, the number of international competitions we participated are more than three times two years ago. We have more experience competing with top level cyclists, which gave us more confidence to win something in the Olympics," Shen said.

With good cooperation and endurance, Li Meifang, Meng Lang, Gao Min will fight hard to make a history for the Chinese road cyclists.

However while BMX is to make its Olympic debut, the Chinese bikers failed to book a berth for the Lao Shan circuit at home turf.

(Xinhua News Agency July 21, 2008)