Meet Ren Ziwei, China's new short track hero

Ren Ziwei has been one of the stars of short track at Beijing 2022, and he's not done yet.

He helped give China a great start to the Winter Olympic Games as part of their winning quartet in the inaugural Olympic short track mixed relay on Saturday (5 February).

But Ren did not hang around for too long to celebrate with the student at Beijing Sports University having to leave promptly to complete an assignment.

Two days later, with his homework done, he won a dramatic 1000m final to claim his second gold of the Games having won men's relay silver at PyeongChang 2018.

His bid for more hardware in the 1500m met a controversial end as he was disqualified from his semi-final.

But the 24-year-old has two more medal chances to come - the 500m and the men's relay - and a gold in either would see him match Wang Meng's Chinese record of three golds at single Winter Games.

Three is also the record for a Chinese athlete at the Summer Olympics, jointly held by gymnasts Li Ning and Zou Kai.

Ren began training as a short track speed skater when he was seven years old.

He was discovered by a local coach Wang Beiming who also had the difficult task of convincing his hesitant parents to let him train and commit to the sport.

A native of Harbin, the capital city of Heilongjiang province in the north-east of China which has produced a number of high-class speed skaters, Ren trained under Wang for 10 years and won his first national age-group title aged 10.

The coach told his doubtful parents that their son would join the national team before he was 18, but Ren's mother was worried after seeing him suffer two fractures in his early teens.

At 16, he was selected for the 2014 World Junior Championships where he took 1500m bronze and men's