For Chinese, much more than medals is at stake

Games a test for transformed athletic system

Hopes are high for hurdler Liu Xiang, whose gold medal in 2004 is a powerful symbol for Chinese athletics. (PETER PARKS/AFP/Getty Images)

BEIJING - No Olympic host has been more invested in the success of the Games and its athletes than China. And no athlete understands that better than champion Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang, who wryly calls himself the "Yellow Tornado."

Liu and other top Chinese athletes like NBA All-Star Yao Ming are the face of a strong, commercially thriving nation ready to compete with the world's best in Beijing and beyond. Hoping to capitalize on the moment, China has changed its traditional, semimilitarized approach to building teams and training athletes in preparation for the Games, especially in sports where China has seldom excelled in past international competitions.

But much more than medal totals rides on the performances of Chinese athletes in Beijing. These Olympics are a coming-out party of almost unfathomable scale for China.

"In the past couple hundred years, China has felt they were looked down upon by world powers," said US Olympic men's track team manager James Li, who was born in China and educated at its top sports institute. "The people see the performances of the athletes in these games as a direct reflection of the strength of the country. To be honest, there's probably too much emphasis on performance."

Liu won the 110-meter hurdles in the 2004 Athens games - a first-ever Chinese gold medal in a men's track and field event. To build on that breakthrough, Chinese authorities have remodeled and modernized their sports organizations. That is particularly the case in sports requiring raw speed, strength, and power, like Liu's specialty. They want to perform well in basketball and track and field, not simply sweep events in the table tennis competition as projected or dominate in other events that value precise technique over pure athleticism.

Just as urban and Olympic venue planners looked outside China for help building an awe-inspiring setting for the Games, the Chinese employed coaches from around the world to improve performances, including the 38 foreign coaches who will be part of the Chinese Olympic delegation. Chinese sports authorities also have been much more open to new training methods.

The result is a Chinese Olympic team that will compete with the United States and Russia for the most medals, though the real dividend will probably come at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics. With China sending 639 athletes as part of its largest delegation ever, the host country should easily surpass the 63 medals won in 2004, which ranked third behind the United States (102) and Russia (92). The Chinese could also claim the most gold medals overall.

For China's top athletes, representing a nation of 1.3 billion people with high expectations creates inevitable pressure. It will be a great disappointment if they cannot live up to the moment. The Chinese take more pride in the accomplishments of Liu than in any aspect of the rebuilt Beijing.

"When Liu Xiang can win a gold medal in one of the pure athletic events like track and field, it really symbolizes [to the Chinese] that they are not inferior," said University of Missouri-St. Louis anthropology professor Susan Brownell, who is studying Chinese Olympic sports culture at Beijing Sport University. "A lot of what underlies China's relationship with the outside world is a deep-seated sense of inferiority. That's the flip side of the ultranationalism you sometimes see."

An assist from US coach

Del Harris has seen the transformation of Chinese athletics up close. When the former NBA coach of the year was named the first foreign coach of the Chinese men's basketball team in 2004, it was a bold move met with criticism and skepticism from more tradition-minded members of the Chinese basketball community. But forward-thinking Chinese sports authorities knew the national team needed a coach with NBA experience to compete with the world's top teams in 2008.

Harris added young players like Yi Jianlian to the Olympic roster, even though Yi had no international experience. He cut veterans too old to make a difference at the Beijing Games.

He also completely changed the way the Chinese trained. Prior to his arrival, they used military techniques in their practices, relying heavily on calisthenics and six-hour workouts. The players had plenty of endurance, but, as Harris said, "They didn't know how to play hard, just how to pace themselves." Harris and his coaching staff taught them everything from how to run up and down the court more efficiently to the latest strength and conditioning drills. The players saw improvement even in practice and embraced the new system.

"They're workers," said Harris. "There's no doubt about it. When they start something, they go at it. That was one of the great pleasures of working with the team. They would do anything asked of them and do it gladly. They were so respectful of everything."

When Harris left the Chinese national basketball program after the Athens Games, he submitted a list of 14 suggestions designed to keep improving the national team and Chinese basketball. The list included finding a head coach who would commit for four years, investing in a full-time strength and conditioning coach with an NBA background, and increasing the number of games played against top international competition. The Chinese implemented all 14 ideas.

But in some ways the best example of how Chinese sports has changed in preparation for Beijing may be the absence of women's 400-meter hurdler Huang Xiaoxiao. She was expected to contend for a medal before suffering an Achilles tendon injury and withdrawing from the Games. But authorities, taking a longer view of success in world competition, are not going to push her to compete.

"In the old days, they would probably have given her shots and made sure she runs and fights to the last step," said Li. "Now, they say, 'We're not going to force her to run. She's going to have a long career and a future. We're not going to ruin her right now.' They really are a lot more open."

Modernized Beijing with buildings designed by top international architects is the most obvious aspect of China's vast, and vastly expensive, preparations for the Games. Some wonder whether the new look of the city may leave a deeper impression on the world than the number and kind of China's Olympic medalists.

"I feel a little sorry for them because they've been playing by outdated rules in some ways when it comes to national image and sports," said Brownell, who competed for Beijing University in the heptathlon in the mid-1980s. "They never quite got it that winning gold medals alone doesn't mean that you have become a strong nation that can compete with other nations."

Added Li: "Whether China is first place in the medal count or second place or third, it probably won't make too much difference in the eyes of the rest of the world."

And many predict that China is still likely to win the majority of its medals in its traditional areas of strength, like table tennis, badminton, and diving. Early suggestions that the Chinese could contend with the United States and Russia for the most medals in track and field by winning as many as 12 have fallen by the wayside. It is a reminder of how hard it is to win at the Olympic level and how long it takes to build a broadly competitive team.

If a half-dozen track and field athletes other than the stars, like Liu, reach event finals, then the Beijing Olympics should be considered a success by the Chinese, said Mark Wetmore, Liu's Boston-based agent.

"If Liu Xiang wins the gold medal, maybe he'll encourage tens of millions of kids to start hurdling in China, and they'll have another guy in five years," Wetmore said. "The impact coming out of the Olympics might be greater than the Olympics on the horizon."

It should come as no surprise that the Chinese are already thinking about improving the size and depth of their talent pool. If the runup to the Beijing Olympics proves one point, it is that the Chinese know how to plan, and how to think big.

"We have a very big population in China, so there must be quite some talented athletes," said Chinese national track team coach Feng Shuyong. "The thing we need to do well now is find a more efficient way to find those talented athletes."