BEIJING, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- Following are China's top 10 sports news in 2014 selected by Xinhua:
1. Female skater Zhang Hong claimed China's first ever Olympic speed skating gold after winning the women's 1,000m title with a large margin at the Sochi Winter Olympics.
China won its first Olympic speed skating medal in 1992 when Ye Qiaobo finished runner-up over both 1,000m and 500m. But the gold had never come until the Sochi Games.
2. China's biggest e-commerce company Alibaba bought half of the country's most successful soccer club Guangzhou Evergrande for 1.2 billion yuan (192 million US dollars) in June.
3. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced on July 7 that Beijing, Oslo and Almaty will contest the race to host the 2022 Winter Olympics.
The winner of the 2022 race will be announced on July 31, 2015 at an IOC congress in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
4. China successfully held the 2nd Summer Youth Olympic Games in east China's Nanjing during Aug. 16-28, with more than 3,700 athletes from around the world taking part in.
During the 13-day sports gala, the young athletes aged between 15-18 have competed in 28 sports in arenas and stadiums in Nanjing, the capital city of Jiangsu Province.
5. Li Na, the two-time Grand Slam champion, Asia's most successful tennis player and a trailblazer for the sport, announced her retirement at the age of 32, citing injuries as reasons to force her out of tennis.
6. At the 17th Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea, China reaped 151 gold medals to extend their dominance to the ninth games, but failed to win any gold medal in soccer, basketball and volleyball.
7. China has announced plans to develop the country's sports industry and raise the sector's annual output to 5 trillion yuan (813.87 billion US dollars) by 2025.
According to a policy document issued by the State Council, China will support the emerging sector by eliminating industrial and policy barriers to form a policy system that is conducive to the sector's rapid growth.
China will also get rid of regulations that hinder the sector's development, scrap unreasonable administrative approval procedures and encourage social capital to invest in the industry.
8. Athlete Chen Penbin won a 100 kilometers nonstop ultra- marathon in Antarctica on Sept. 20, becoming the first Chinese to claim an international ultra-marathon title and also the first runner to compete in all seven continents.
9. Chinese multi-Olympic and world swimming champion Sun Yang failed a doping test in May and has been banned for three months. Sun used the drug for medical reasons and had been unaware that it was listed in WADA's 2014 prohibited list.
10. China has vowed to provide more chances for students to play soccer and will put football into the regular sports education system in schools. China will make efforts to set up 20,000 soccer-specialty schools and 200 high-level university soccer teams by 2017.
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