A 2022 Sports Administration history places Meng Qingyu’s arrival in Qitaihe in 1969, when he was assigned work at a coal mine; he often skated on the Woken River. In 1972 he represented the city at the Hejiang regional ice meet and won all three men’s speed-skating events. A 2017 China Sports Daily account then records his 1974 appointment as a coach at age 23. These are successive stages—mine worker, competitor and coach. As short track emerged in China in the 1980s, Meng changed the city team’s focus from speed skating to short track and made the women’s event its main direction.
From the journal
Meng Qingyu: from coal work to Qitaihe’s short-track turn
Meng’s mining job, early speed-skating wins and later coaching role mark separate stages in Qitaihe’s skating history.
In the same city · Qitaihe ↗From mine worker to coach
A team built in the open air
The first training conditions were improvised. The 2017 account says Meng made a patch of ice only about ten square metres wide by throwing water from basins, then trained athletes on its turns. Coaches and skaters poured and maintained their own outdoor rinks; they lived in a drafty room beneath the stadium stands, where winter nights were bitterly cold. Meng also made training and skate-repair tools himself. This routine of building ice, equipment and a team helps explain how the coach’s choices became a local training practice.