[3] Yu Jing made her World Cup debut at the Changchun meeting in 2008, after winning a gold and a bronze at the Asian Championships the year before.

The rest of the season, she raced consistently and acquired multiple podium places in the World Cup, but there were no more victories.

She chose not to compete anymore in the World Cup in order to concentrate on the 2011 Asian Winter Games in Astana, starting in the end of January 2011.

The gamble turned out to be successful, and on 1 February, she managed to take the gold medal in the 500 m event, beating Wang Beixing and Lee Sang-hwa.

When the World Cup circuit started again in the fall of 2011, Yu began to dominate in the 500 m. At the first meeting in Chelyabinsk, she won both of the races over that distance, each time with a winning margin over 0.4 seconds.