Heavy Burden on Athletes Takes Joy Away From China’s Olympic Success
By ANDREW JACOBS
BEIJING — When Liu Xiang, China’s
track and field superstar, crashed to the ground at the London Olympic
Games on Tuesday after stumbling over the first hurdle in his 110-meter
men’s hurdles heat, an announcer on the state broadcaster openly wept
and subway riders thronging platform television screens gasped in
horror.
But instead of the scorn and anger that met Mr. Liu four years ago when a
similar injury to his Achilles’ tendon forced him from the Olympic
stadium in Beijing just before the race began, the overwhelming majority
of those using the nation’s most popular microblog site reacted with
magnanimity and grace.
“I believe, I steadfastly believe that Liu Xiang is our hero,” wrote one
user on Sina Weibo. “He was, he is, and he always will be.”
Within an hour of Mr. Liu’s dramatic tumble, millions had posted
messages, most of them supportive and laudatory. If there were voices of
disgust, they were directed at the Chinese government, with its rigid
Soviet-style sports system and a single-minded fixation on winning gold
medals.
“With this oppressive national sports system, he only had one choice —
to win respect and hurt himself,” one fan wrote. Another writer called
the tumble “an entire generation’s tragedy.”
By any measure, this should be a season of unvarnished celebration for
China. It has pulled slightly ahead of the United States in the battle
for medals, and the Games have produced a new national hero in Sun Yang,
the first Chinese man to win an Olympic gold in swimming.
But in recent days, a tide of self-doubt and introspection about the
human costs of China’s Olympic prowess has arisen amid worries that the
nation’s draconian sports system is sometimes producing damaged goods.
Floundering athletes can even be cast aside after their careers are over
— a point driven home last year when a former gold medal gymnast was
found begging on the streets of Beijing. According to the state media,
240,000 retired athletes are grappling with injuries, poverty and
unemployment.
Sometimes the victors inadvertently reveal the sacrifices they were
forced to endure during their years of training. Last week, shortly
after winning her third Olympic gold medal, the Chinese diver Wu Minxia
was told that her grandparents had died years earlier and that her
mother had been diagnosed with cancer. Ms. Wu’s father explained that
the family preferred to lie to his daughter all those years rather than
risk harming her Olympic prospects.
“We accepted a long time ago that she doesn’t belong to us,” the father,
Wu Yuming, told a Shanghai newspaper. “I don’t even dare think about
things like enjoying family happiness.”
Like many Chinese athletes, Ms. Wu had been plucked from her family as
an adolescent and sent to live at a state-financed sports academy, where
training is grueling. Many athletes do not see their families for
years. Last week, after Lin Qingfeng claimed a gold medal in men’s
weight lifting, his father told reporters that he did not recognize his
23-year-old son, whom he had not seen for six and a half years, until he
heard his name mentioned on television. “It’s been a long time,” Mr.
Lin’s mother said, “since he’s had a meal at home.”
Yan Qiang, a veteran sportswriter, defended China’s emphasis on winning
medals, saying they have helped to unify the nation. “We still need gold
medals to boost social morale,” he said in an interview. “The people
need it. And the athletes are willing to gamble their youth for a
brighter tomorrow.”
The obsession with Olympic glory is inextricably tied to the country’s
recent history. In the first half of the 20th century, Chinese
intellectuals called their nation “the sick man of Asia,” lamenting its
failure to produce Olympic-worthy athletes. Shortly after founding the
People’s Republic of China, Mao Zedong sent a delegation of 40 men and
women to the 1952 Summer Games in Helsinki, Finland; all but one arrived
too late to compete.
In the decades that followed, China boycotted the Games to protest the
participation of Taiwan, the breakaway island China still considers a
province. It was not until the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid, N.Y.,
that Beijing returned to the Olympic fold.
In 1984, it won its first cache of gold medals during the Summer Games
in Los Angeles. Still, in the years that followed, Chinese athletes
struggled to make their mark beyond sports like pistol shooting, table
tennis and badminton.
The Communist Party set out to change that in 2002, when it began
Project 119, a program that uses prodigious state resources and
relentless training to groom potential gold medalists in sports like
swimming, gymnastics and track and field.
Dong-Jhy Hwang, a historian at the Graduate Institute of Physical
Education at National Taiwan Sport University, noted that for many years
China’s competitive fires were constrained by Mao, who proclaimed that
during international sports events, friendship mattered more than
competition.
The shift was perhaps best personified by the outburst last week of Wu
Jingbiao, who sobbed uncontrollably to a Chinese camera crew and
apologized for “shaming the motherland” after winning a silver medal in a
men’s weight lifting event. A female weight lifter, 17-year-old Zhou
Jun, was branded a “national disgrace” by a provincial newspaper after
she finished in last place. (The newspaper later apologized after a
firestorm of indignation raged across the Internet.)
Such episodes have persuaded a growing number of sports journalists,
athletes and other Chinese that there has to be another way. “We should
treat all medalists as equal,” said Tan Jianxiang, a sports professor at
South China Normal University. “Whatever the color, a medal is a
tremendous honor.”
David Yang, a writer at Sports Illustrated China, complained that most
young Chinese are singularly focused on academics and are given little
opportunity to take part in sports at school. He urged the government to
abandon its separate top-down factory approach and embrace a universal
system of physical activity that would allow most young people to
experience the joys and health benefits of athletics.
“By reforming the system,” he said, “we can unleash the potential of 1.3
billion Chinese to win gold medals for the state while doing something
for their physical well-being.”
No comments:
Post a Comment