One story is about a weightlifting gold medalist from North Korea, who magically lifted the barbell three times of his own weight, burst into tears during the interview and attributed his accomplishment to the "love of Kim Jong Il and his successor Kim Jung En". The silver-medal winner, a Chinese athlete, cried over his failure and told the reporter that he was very sorry for "disappointing his beloved country and people." He shouldn't be sorry: among those who are not blessed by the Kims, he is still the best.
Also in the weightlifting competition, a 17-year old Chinese female athlete who was assigned to Group B failed to lift the barbell three times and ended her performance with a score of 0. This probably doesn't happen that frequently in the Olympics, but shouldn't be a big surprise: uncertainties are very common in sports events. But later Chinese reports claimed this entire event to be a "shameful event in Chinese weightlifting history", as an athlete ended with a score of 0 in a sport that Chinese teams have been good at traditionally. A long report released the inside information about the selection procedure of weightlifters, which seemed to be a compromise between local governments. The poor girl was interviewed after her performance, "I didn't know what happened, I was probably too nervous." She said with a blank look.
Zufilya, a female weightlifting athlete who won a gold-medal in women's 53-kg weightlifting final for Kazakhstan, was revealed to be a Chinese athlete. She was "arranged" to become a Kazakhstan citizen in a so-called exchange program by the General Administration of Sports, who forged her resume to be qualified for immigration. She is alleged to return to China after this Olympics, as agreed in the exchange program. When Zufilya was on the podium, singing the anthem of Kazakhstan, her colleague Ping Li, who was viewed as the most valuable athlete in women's 53-kg weightlifting, could only stay at home due to the compromise in domestic power games.
All these stories, give us a jigsaw of China and its communist comrade's state-run sports systems. Obsession with gold medal is only the start of all the tragedy. I think it's amazing for an athlete to be eligible for participating Olympics. Gold medals are precious for sure, but silver, bronze ones are beautiful too. But this is not the case for Chinese sports officials. They sent congratulatory telegrams to a gold medalist without even mentioning the name of the bronze medalist, who is also a Chinese athlete, let alone those who attended the competition but not getting a medal. Thus you will find Chinese athletes very depressed if they miss the gold medal, while athletes from UK, US, etc still happily kiss their silver or bronze medals. I couldn't constrain my anger when I saw such a hard working athlete apologize for "getting a silver medal only." This simply doesn't look right.
Behind the dream for gold medals is the cost of billions of dollars and huge wastes of human resources. Government squanders tax payers' money on training athletes to win models (and reputation in their eyes) in international sports games, the number of which determines promotion and demotion of sports bureaucrats. Kids from poor background choose to get engaged in sports for better lives, and own their livings on their rankings. When they're not able to participate competitions any more either because of their ages, wounds or other political reasons, government usually offers them paychecks based on previous achievement. Thus too much burden is laid on these communist athletes, for all their competitions are connected with national honor and pride. The quality of their future lives are largely determined by a few competitions as well. Some athletes are very successful, like Deng Yaping, a Ping-pong player who won four Olympics gold-medals, has become a senior-level government official after receiving her degree from Oxford. But most of them, who fail to make a name of themselves, suffer from sports injuries and low payment for the rest of their lives. If we do understand the harsh side of the whole story, we may find Olympics in China very different from Coubertin's original intention, but more similar to an ancient Chinese proverb: one general achieves renown over the dead bodies of ten thousand.
I noticed an interesting contrast in microblog and facebook. Most of my microblog friends, who are Chinese of course, talk about Olympics intensely and cheer for every gold medal the Chinese team earns. But my facebook friends, most of whom are Americans, don't even mention a word of Olympics, but their personal lives - party, trips and family. I like watching Olympics, but I hate the fact that it is our attention to the Olympics that is making these children fight for the vanity of nation at the cost of their childhood, youth and future. To prevent more children from suffering these unnecessary pains, maybe we should start off showing less passion for the game, and caring less about the ridiculous national pride in international sports competitions.
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