The man who serves as the U.S. Olympic Committee’s athletic director got a sobering reminder of China’s relentless quest for Olympic dominance last week when he visited the Shichahai Sports School in Beijing.
Steve Roush, the USOC’s chief of sport performance, toured an elaborate facility where 600 young prospects live, train and pursue their academic studies under the auspices of the government’s Sports Ministry. Roush’s visit came on a goodwill tour marking the approach of the Beijing Olympics, which begin a year from today.
“It’s truly eye-opening to see what they’re doing,” Roush said.
China has created 300 elite schools such as Shichahai to propel the world’s most populous country to superpower status in sports. They are cogs in the world’s most sophisticated sports machine, bigger even than those built by the Soviet Union and East Germany during the Cold War.
Students at Shichahai range in age from 6-21, specializing in gymnastics, weightlifting, taekwondo, table tennis, badminton and volleyball. Graduates include taekwondo Olympic champion Luo Wei, gymnastics all-around bronze medalist Zhang Nan and pommel horse Olympic champion Teng Haibin.
“This is not just investing in a few athletes for a short period of time hoping they have success while they host the Games,” Roush said. “The results of this type of investment and this type of system are going to garner them results in 2012, 2016 and beyond.”
As for medal prospects in 2008, it seemed officials from China and the U.S. last week were inventing a new Olympic sport – synchronized sandbagging. Or was it parallel poor-mouthing?
USOC officials cited results from major international competitions in 2006 that gave China a 45-36 edge over the U.S. in gold medals. Russia was close behind the U.S. with 34.
“It’s no secret that we’re more than an underdog,” USOC chief executive Jim Scherr said. “They’re blowing us out of the water in the gold medal race.”
Meanwhile, China’s deputy minister of sport, Cui Dalin, was conceding the battle for medal supremacy in 2008 to the U.S. and Russia. China finished second behind the U.S. in the gold-medal count at the 2004 Athens Olympics.
“America and Russia are stronger. We are far behind, especially in athletics (track and field), swimming and water sports,” said Cui, also vice chairman of the Chinese Olympic Committee. “We are trying to be the leaders of the second group.”
In hopes of dominating the Beijing Games, China specifically targeted those sports with a program it called “Project 119,” taking the number from available gold medals in those disciplines. Cui declared Project 119 a failure, an assessment Roush called premature.
Roush said it takes longer to develop Olympic medal contenders in track and swimming than China had hoped when the IOC awarded Beijing the Olympics in 2001.
“I also think there’s great pressure in China on the concept of them being the No. 1 gold-medal winning nation next year,” Roush said of Cui’s remarks. “It’s probably an attempt to defuse that pressure that is mounting on their athletes, their sport federations and their coaches.”
Look out in 2012
China has few highly ranked track and field athletes, although 110-meter hurdler Liu Xiang is the reigning Olympic champion and world-record holder. But China may become a track power by the 2012 London Games, if last year’s world junior championships are any indication. China won more medals (17) than any other nation and was No. 2 in gold medals behind Kenya. The U.S. was third.
In swimming, Chinese women won 12 gold medals at the 1994 world championships, but soon were racking up more than 30 doping violations, a severe embarrassment for the Chinese Olympic Committee. They’re no longer testing positive, or winning gold medals. China claimed two medals (neither gold) at this year’s world championships – versus 35 for the U.S. – and two (one gold) at the Athens Olympics.
China figures to be strongest next year in gymnastics, diving, women’s volleyball and a host of smaller sports Americans typically ignore such as table tennis, badminton and shooting.
The Chinese long ago developed into a gymnastics threat. Chinese gymnasts had a disappointing 2004 Olympics but won men’s and women’s team titles at last year’s world championships. They’ve also played with their lineups at major championships, sometimes leaving top athletes at home to give younger athletes big-event experience.
“I believe they’ve been on an eight-year plan to put the best team possible on the floor in Beijing,” USA Gymnastics chief executive Steve Penny said. “There’s no question they’ve been grooming athletes. The most important thing to them is what’s going to happen in 2008.”
U.S. hopes to apply heat
But gymnastics is a sport in which pressure can cause favorites to falter, and Chinese gymnasts have a reputation for falling short when the stakes are high.
“It’s hard to imagine the amount of pressure that’s going to be on a Chinese gymnast when they walk out onto the floor at the Olympics in Beijing,” Penny said, “given that the sport is so important to their Olympic movement.”
The same goes for diving. China won more gold medals in diving (six) at the Athens Olympics than in any other sport, and Chinese divers are major celebrities. USA Diving high performance director Ron O’Brien said it will be up to U.S. divers to put the pressure on them.
“I don’t know how the government works, whether they put a lot of pressure on them or not,” O’Brien said. “I have seen events in the past, when somebody gets up and competes with them strongly, they can be shaken. It’s possible that if they get off to a bad start, it could be a tough Olympics for them.”
David Oliver, a former Denver East High School athlete who is one of America’s best 110-meter hurdlers, said the pressure on Liu as the star of China’s track team also will be huge.
“We’ll see how he is when he has to deal with that pressure,” Oliver said. “The hurdles, they’re the constant, they’re going to be 42 inches high. The only variable is you.”
Meanwhile, USOC officials get nervous pondering the output of China’s sports machine beyond the Beijing Games. In a country of 1.3 billion people, 6 million children specialize in various sports at the elementary level and 400,000 attend intermediate sports schools, according to Chinese government figures.
“They have aptitude tests, skill tests that prospective athletes take at young ages,” Roush said. “If they are identified with a skill set they think would be worthy of bringing them on, they are approached and asked to attend the school.”
Roush said the USOC plans to counter China’s government-backed system by working with national governing bodies to improve talent identification at young ages, getting more children into the club programs and working more closely with the NCAA to replenish the athlete development pipeline. Roush said he is confident the U.S. can take China’s best shot.
“I would simply step down from my position if I wasn’t,” Roush said. “If we had been perfect, and there wasn’t room for improvement on our part, then it would be a much dimmer picture. We’re going to have to get better, in order for us to stay in the game, but it’s certainly doable. … We love a challenge.”
