It's 6:00 in the morning in the eastern city of Nanjing, and a group of teenagers are getting ready to start their day. Ahead of them are not hours spent studying math or literature. Instead, they are looking forward to some rigorous and extensive training on their skateboards.

The young athletes are being instructed by a team of leading international skateboarders and fitness coaches, who have been brought to China specially for this purpose.

There is a particular reason for the increased interest in skateboarding and this concerted effort to develop a generation of outstanding skaters – the inclusion of the sport in the 2020 Olympics. The announcement unleashed a flurry of investment in training talent and building facilities in China, aimed at giving the country's skating youngsters the chance to win gold. The trainers are almost exclusively from abroad. As for their young charges, they've been plucked from sports schools all across the country.

Fourteen-year old Zeng Wenhui spends around seven hours a day training. For her, sports schools are nothing new. She was recruited from a kung-fu college in Guangxi, having been persuaded that the new arena of skateboarding offered her a greater chance of success. It's been only a year since she started skateboarding, yet in that short time she's been hugely successful. She came fourth in the freestyle skating event at the 2018 Asian Games, and won the women's freestyle title at the 2019 National Skateboarding Championship in Beijing. She seems like a certainty to make the national team for 2020.

“It would be an honor to win for my country,” Wenhui says. “I'll do my best to win the gold medal at the 2020 Olympic Games.”

However, she and her friends are aware that just making it to the Olympics requires enormous personal sacrifice. For one thing, their diet is strictly monitored; eating a full meal outside their canteen is forbidden. For another, they have no holidays, so most of them haven't seen their parents since coming to Nanjing. Skateboarding is the overriding priority in their lives right now.

As one of the best skaters on the team, the pressure on Wenhui to perform is particularly great. Like many other sports, skateboarding takes a physical toll, be it bruises, broken limbs or, in Wenhui's case, a chipped tooth. She says it's worth it, though. With steely determination, she keeps getting back on her board.

But the reality can be cruel. Head Coach Cai Yongjun explains that however hard they work, many of the youngsters training here won't make it to the national team.

“We always tell our athletes how intense the training here is,” Cai says. “We make sure they understand every detail. If they can make it, they can stay. But if not, they're free to leave.

“Our goal is simple,” he continues. “We want the gold medal in the 2020 Olympics. The Olympics have a huge influence in China. If our skaters do well, it's sure to make skateboarding more popular in China.”

Yet there are those in the skateboarding community who argue that aspiring to success and undergoing the rigid training required to achieve it, run counter to the very essence of a sport that is traditionally seen as rebellious and anti-establishment.

However, Dan Wileman, one of the UK's best-known skateboarders and Zhao Wenhui's trainer, sees the development in China as positive.

“China is really passionate about the Olympics, whatever sport it is. It's good,” he says. “Any country that doesn't have a big skate scene and is about to have a skate scene because of whatever reason, it's good.”