BEIJING — It was the middle of the night in Los Angeles when Peter Ueberroth got the momentous phone call from Beijing with news of the breakthrough that may have saved the Olympic movement.
China had agreed to ignore the Soviet Union’s boycott of the 1984 Games and would send a team to Los Angeles, the only city that would take the Olympics at the time.
“When the People’s Republic of China was announced coming into the stadium in Los Angeles, it changed our Games,” said Ueberroth, now chairman of the U.S. Olympic team and then the man running the L.A. Games. “Ninety-thousand people stood and cheered from all parts of the world. They were welcoming China into the Olympic movement.”
Today, China welcomes the world, with an opening ceremony kicking off 17 days of competition, pageantry and exposure to an ancient land that encompasses one-sixth of the world’s population. A new China, one that opens its arms to outsiders while receiving condemnation for its treatment of dissidents.
The Games “will mean a lot for the rest of the world to discover what China really is, to discover a country which for most people is mysterious,” said International Olympic Committee chairman Jacques Rogge. “They will see a country with a history and a tradition and a culture of 5,000 years.”
About 80 heads of state are expected to attend the opening ceremonies.
Ueberroth said he stands “in awe” of the facilities China has built and will have everlasting gratitude for China’s decision to compete in Los Angeles, rescuing an Olympic movement on life support.
Arab terrorists had killed eight Israelis at the 1972 Munich Olympics, Montreal had run up crippling debt staging the 1976 Games, and President Carter had kept the U.S. home from the 1980 Moscow Games because of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, leading the way for 65 nations to boycott.
Los Angeles marked China’s first trip to the Summer Olympics since it withdrew from the 1956 Games to protest Taiwan’s presence. Its decision to rejoin the Olympic family pushed it down the path toward closer ties to the outside world only 12 years after President Nixon’s historic first visit here.
It also gave the powers of the Olympic movement reason to shudder, because they knew one day the former sleeping giant of Asia that today has 1.3 billion people would turn its strength in numbers to dominate the Games.
China has built the most sophisticated Olympic sports-development machine ever devised. More than 200,000 children are trained in elite sports schools. They are identified as potential stars at an early age and groomed much like the sports mills of the Soviet Union and East Germany during the Cold War. China also hired top coaches from throughout the world.
“It’s truly eye-opening to see what they’re doing,” said Steve Roush, chief of sport performance for the USOC. “This is not just investing in a few athletes for a short period of time and hope they have success while you host the Games. The results of this type of investment and this type of system is going to garner them results in 2012, 2016 and beyond.”
China’s emergence as a power in Olympic sports has tracked along with its growing economic might, including a construction boom that has transformed Beijing. “Jenny” Lang Ping, who coaches the U.S. women’s volleyball team, is a superstar here for her play in the early 1980s. She has a hard time processing what she sees when she returns.
“I come back home every year a couple times,” she said. “I don’t even (recognize) the streets, I need a GPS. I’ll be asking my sister, ‘Where’s this?’ I can’t imagine how much change there is. It’s beautiful.”
But the worldwide attention that comes with the Olympics also has shined a spotlight on China’s human- rights abuses and intolerance of dissent. IOC officials acknowledged China’s human-rights record when Beijing was awarded the Games in 2001, and expressed hope that by having the Games, the Chinese regime would improve.
Human-rights activists say that hasn’t happened. The IOC continues to hope these Games will make a difference.
“I believe the spotlight put by the Olympic Games on China will help the world to understand China better,” Rogge said, “And, maybe, for China to understand the world better.”
John Meyer: 303-954-1616 or jmeyer@denverpost.com
