Hello from Orange County California, I’m Florin Shan and welcome to Asian fusion. In this edition of special report from California to Beijing made in China how athletes have been designed and manufactured into champions and how some champions from the east are now training Olympic hopefuls in the west.
Like a giant waking from a long slumber China is preparing for its coming-out party when it hosts the 2008 Olympic Games. Some experts predict China will emerge for the first time as the world’s new Olympic superpower ruling the most medals.
This is the story of the China’s best Olympian’s. Hourly manufactured like human machines by China’s sports factory. How much fame and fortune can China’s stars enjoy under a communist state and why are some champions leaving China to help rival athletes? These national heroes include stars past and present. From the 2004 Games in Athens superstar celebrities such as Liu Xiang——China’s first ever man’s Olympic gold winner in track and field hoping to repeat in 2008. He is now a singer, movie star and millionaire endorser of everything from cars to clothes and mobile phones to soft drinks. And from 20 years earlier, 1984, Lixiaoping, one of China’s first world champion gymnast during Los Angeles Games now retired and coach the Olympic hopefuls on the other side in America. Then and now, there are Chinese Olympians who win glories for their nation. While many younger stars such as Liu xiang stay in their motherland enjoying new heights of fame and fortune, some veterans such as Li xiaoping relocated to new world sharing the lessons of the old way. Yellow all, they’ll find themselves forever changed while changing those around them. Li xiaoping changed from a boy with long arms into a world champion on the pommel horse whose team won a silver medal. He changed growing up under China’s soviet's style sports machine.
“Coaches basically control everything in your life for the kids. It’s more like your parents.”
His wife was under his team. And in the early 80s, Zhao yin was part of China’s world champion silver medal team. Later she coached the women’s team. Today they run their own gymnastics school outside Los Angles where American children come here first for fun unlike the system in China.
“The system was not meant to set up for you to enjoy the sports. It produced the top gymnasts, produced the champions.”
And China is producing lots of them. China’s rank for winning medals——fourth in Atlanta, third in Sydney, second in Athens, only one spot to go. China is counting on a one-two punch. First, home field advantage. Second, pay back from the hundreds of millions of dollars the state has invested in sports programs. This is the famed Qiqihaer sports school in Beijing which has produces 25 world champions even Jet Lee long before his action movies. During the 2004 Games in Athens, this one school alone surpassed the nation of Canada by producing three individual and two team gold medals. In the gym, dozens of half-plants wearing leotards or just their underwear, run, jump and flip across the floor, balance on beams, rock from the rings and swing from bars over and over and over until they get it right.
“It is very hard and now you get up at 6 o’clock in the morning, start run whether you know snow, whether windy day, You just keep doing it.”
