Young Chinese Athletes

The Training Behind the

Gold Medals

‫העובדות שמאחורי מדליות זהב של הסינים‬

• The girls of the gold-medal-winning
Chinese women's gymnastics team might
have seen their parents once a year since
age three, when the state put the girls in a
training program
• Since 2001, the regime has invested billions in “Project 119”, an
Olympic training program meant to ensure that China sits atop the
medal table this year. The system is named after the number of gold
medals that were available in track and field, swimming, and rowing
in 2001—areas where Chinese athletes have traditionally been
weak.

• In the quest for gold, many Chinese athletes have surrendered their
education, personal financial control, and even their health. Children
are recruited from a very young age, nation-wide, according to body
type.

• Hundreds of thousands of youngsters are put into provincial-level

training systems, and are successively filtered out according to
performance. The best athletes move through the system to
compete at a national level, where they are put under intense
pressure to perform.

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/sports/the-price-of-gold-in-beijing-
olympics-china-sports-2664.html
• Coaches are sent across China to search for promising children in
kindergartens and schoolyards. They look for kids with the right
physique who seem particularly agile as they run and jump. The best
youngsters are removed from their families and sent to boarding
schools, where everything revolves around their training.

• As recently as 1984, China had a mere 17,000 athletes at all levels of

organized sports – and many of these were not in Olympic sports.
Today, there are 400,000 youngsters in China’s state-run athletic
academies, where their lives are regimented in a ruthlessly focused
drive for perfection.

• When the best of these children have developed into Olympians, they
are given further help by top scientists, psychologists and technicians.
Elite foreign coaches are often hired to push them to the next level.
“There’s no doubt that these foreign coaches are helping China’s
Olympic troops,” the People’s Daily commented last week. “They are
adding wings to the tiger.”

http://letustalk.wordpress.com/2008/08/02/olympics-china-to-athletes-
win-gold-at-any-cost-for-motherland/
• For the Chinese government, gold is
everything. “One gold equals 1,000
silvers,” Olympic officials sometimes tell their
coaches.

• Money is another key factor. Hefty cash

bonuses are awarded to every gold medalist.
The most celebrated winners could receive
more than one million yuan (about $150,000)
in cash bonuses, according to Chinese
media reports.
• In the 2008 Summer Olympics, officially
known as the Games of the XXIX
Olympiad Chinese athletes won the
most gold medals, with 51, and
100 medals altogether.
 Sources / Fuentes
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/sports/the-price-of-gold-in-
beijing-olympics-china-sports-2664.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/olympics/2590136/
China-pump-billions-into-producing-golden-generation-of-
Olympians-Beijing-Games.html

http://buzzinn.net/chinese-olympic-training/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1301864/
Chinese-children-contorted-painful-positions-gymnastics-
training.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Summer_Olympics

http://letustalk.wordpress.com/2008/08/02/olympics-china-to-
athletes-win-gold-at-any-cost-for-motherland/
The End

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