Meng Guanliang

Meng Guanliang is a . He won the C-2 500 m gold medal at the .

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 .

His best world championship performance came in 2003 in , USA. Meng reached two individual finals, finishing in fifth place in the C1 500 m and sixth in the 200 m.

For the 2004 season he formed a C2 partnership with Yang Wenjun. On their first international appearance together in , Japan, they shocked observers by posting a 500m 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 , 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 and . 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.

Meng is 182 cm tall and weighs 88 kg .