Is the Chinese volleyball formula of 'recruiting long-legged girls' out of date?

At the 2025 Women's Volleyball World Championship, China is the team with the most impressive average height, surpassing even the sports powerhouses from the West.

Li Ying Ying, Chinese volleyball star, is 1.95m tall - Photo: INS

Specifically, the average height of the Chinese women's volleyball team participating in the 2025 World Championship is 1.9m. While the average height of the champion Italy is only 1.85m, and the US is 1.86m, both are shorter than China.

China develops volleyball based on height

In the previous generation of the Chinese women's volleyball team, they have a total of 7 athletes who are over 1.9m tall, and 3 more who are 1.89m tall. That means, except for the liberos, almost the entire Chinese volleyball team is over 1.9m tall.

Even China's setters are over 1.8m tall. And the big stars are almost 2m tall, like Li Ying Ying - 1.95m tall, Zhu Ting - 1.98m tall, or Yuan Xinyue - a whopping 2.03m tall.

This is the result of a strategy of selecting and training athletes based on genetic factors. Specifically, most of China's volleyball stars come from the provinces of Liaoning, Shandong, Hebei, Tianjin, and Gansu - where the local residents have an outstanding average height.

Yuan Xinyue - volleyball star over 2m tall - Photo: VNL

Like Li Ying Ying, she grew up in Heilongjiang - the northernmost province of China, where it is cold all year round, with winters even as cold as -30 degrees Celsius. Zhu Ting is from Henan , also a northeastern province.

People in northern China are on average 10cm taller than those in the south. For example, the average height of men and women in Heilongjiang is 1.79m - 1.68m, while in Guangdong it is only 1.7m - 1.59m.

And finding girls with the potential to be taller than 1.9m in the Northern provinces is relatively easy.

Must learn from Japanese

Over a long period of time, the selection and training of young girls with outstanding height has helped Chinese women's volleyball develop rapidly.

Even as Western countries began to take volleyball seriously, China's nearly 2m tall superstars still helped the team reach the world's top 4 from 2014 to 2018, and even won Olympic gold in 2016.

But in the past 5 years, Chinese women's volleyball has been in a terrible decline. Not only has China lost its championship candidate status, but it has also been eliminated early from consecutive major tournaments.

At the 2025 World Cup in Thailand, China stopped at the round of 16. And most recently, they suffered shocking defeats in youth tournaments such as the U16 Asia, as well as the Asian Youth Games.

Chinese athletes always overwhelm Japan in height, but are falling behind in performance - Photo: XINHUA

The failure of Chinese volleyball was even more painful when the Japanese still succeeded, entering the world's top 4 with a completely opposite physical formula.

At the World Championship, Japan was the shortest team in the tournament with an average height of only 1.75m, meaning the Japanese girls were almost a head shorter than China. And yet they made it to the semi-finals.

Japan's success has left the Chinese confused with the formula of "recruiting tall girls" for women's volleyball. A topic has been raised, is it possible that training young people based purely on height has become outdated?

"Look at the world's top athletes , many are shorter than 1.9m, some are only 1.8m. I think the fact that we only select tall girls has taken away the opportunities of girls who are a little shorter - but have more qualities," a fan commented on Sohu.

This opinion has received a lot of support, and the proof is right at the 2025 World Cup.

Gabi (number 10) is not tall but is still a top superstar in the world - Photo: FIVB

Not the tall opposite setters or attackers, the best player of the tournament was Alessia Orro - a setter who is only 1.78m tall, 4-5cm shorter than the Chinese setters.

And the two best strikers of the tournament are Gabi - a Brazilian superstar with a height of 1.8m, and Japanese girl Mayu Ishikawa - who is only 1.74m tall.

For two decades, China has been attacking the world of top volleyball with its overwhelming physique, causing many Western countries to be stunned and shocked to realize "so Eastern people are so tall".

But when Westerners became familiar with volleyball, and added to that the strange formula of the Japanese, Chinese "long legs" seemed to have become obsolete.

HUY DANG

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/cong-thuc-tuyen-chan-dai-cua-bong-chuyen-trung-quoc-da-het-thoi-20251111192741496.htm