Team China's women's rowers Chen Yunxia, Zhang Ling, Lyu Yang, and Cui Xiaotong set a world best time of 6 minutes and 5.13 seconds to win the gold in quadruple sculls at the Sea Forest Waterway of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games on Wednesday.

"I feel calm because I haven't had a chance to review the race. But after receiving the gold medal, we were truly excited as all our hard work paid off," Chen said. 

It has been 13 years since the Chinese rowers took their first ever Olympic gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The quartet won the event at the 2019 World Championships and they have remained unbeaten ever since.

"The most difficult parts are the skills and coordination. We learned each other's rhythms step by step since we began training and competing together," Zhang said. "It was a long process for us four to have such a good results in every race, including the final. We've changed our skills to better adapt to the scull and to go faster in the competitions."

It may look easy to the audiences, but only the rowers know how hard it is. Winning the gold medal have made all the hard training worth it. Chen shared how hard their coach has pushed them.

"She requires high skills, maneuvers and positions out of us. She sets the highest standards in these aspects. We are also told to remain disciplined and keep our spirits high."

Rowers of Team China established a convincing lead before the final 500 meters of the race, and led all the way to clinch gold with a big time margin of 6.23 seconds over second-placed Poland. China's winning result also lowered the previous world's best time of 6:06.84.

Talking about the big win margin, Chen attributed it to months of hard work and dedication. "We just focused on the process of our everyday training. We didn't think much about the result because sometimes the result could be opposite of what you expect," she recalled.