Using allegations of China for manipulating children without any proof as the reason that the West can't beat China sounds to me a poor excuse at best. Typical US imperialism. And reading that from Berndt has completely erased whatever respect is left I have of him.
What can you expect when the sheeple get manipulated by Facebook without their consent? Well, I guess there are more
important issues to solve than beating China at table tennis, say safeguarding those poor little souls from being taken by mass shooters at schools? They shouldn't be deprived of the chance to be manipulated by big corporations.
Expressco.uk July 20, 2011
China’s brutal race for Olympic gold
Tom Daley’s quit school in a bid to win medals in a year but can athletes compete against those coached in the most sadistic training regime ever devised?
By ADRIAN LEE
PUBLISHED: 00:00, Tue, Jul 26, 2011
These young weightlifters set their sights high
These young weightlifters set their sights high []
TOM DALEY’S recent visit to China was a chastening experience.
The teenage diving sensation, who is expected to lead our assault on the medal table at next year’s London Olympics, returned home empty-handed from the World Championships in Shanghai.
Worse, the 17-year-old and his fellow Britons could only watch helplessly as the host nation won all 10 golds on offer.
It’s a setback that has prompted Daley to announce that he is quitting school to focus on next year’s Games.
Daley’s dedication is commendable but his failure in the Far East, where he came fifth, provides a wake-up call to anyone who believes Britain will stroll to a record medal haul.
A gymnastics coach pushes his pupil to the limit
A gymnastics coach pushes his pupil to the limit
China is approaching sport with a level of precision, planning and ruthlessness normally reserved for the battlefield.
Throw a population of 1.3 billion into the mix and it’s apparent that its success at the Beijing Olympics, topping the medal table for the first time, was no fluke.
China is emerging as an economic super-power and its leaders recognise that the Olympics, with its global television audience, is the perfect showcase for its power.
“Sport is not just playing ball. It reflects our country’s image, force, spirit and the superiority of our socialist construction. The achievements in sport are the glory of our country and our people.”
Much has changed since that statement was written by a Communist Party official in 1963 but it still encapsulates
China’s attitude to sport.
Chairman Mao Zedong established China’s sporting structure in the Fifties and the result is a win-at-all- costs mentality.
Chinese children showing athletic promise are enlisted into regional training schools. It is known as the whole-nation system in a country where there are more than 600,000 sports centres.
The elite pupils are then dispatched to China’s sinister National Training Centre, a sprawl of buildings in a Beijing suburb patrolled by armed guards.
Once there they become employees of the state and are expected to sacrifice everything in exchange for the opportunity to bring glory to China.
When their careers are over the best are rewarded with free university educations to compensate for the schooling they have missed.
Those who fail to win medals must sit tough entrance exams. Training methods are shrouded in secrecy but occasional glimpses have revealed the brutality and bullying that goes on in the name of sport.
The burn-out and injury rate is claimed to be high. This is especially the case in gymnastics where boys and girls endure torturous stretching exercises and are made to do handstands for up to 30 minutes to improve balance and endurance.
Parents tolerate this hard, some say abusive, treatment because it is part of the culture and there are financial bonuses for those who climb to the pinnacle of their sport.
A gold medal can be worth up to £15,000. In China there is a phrase that translates as “well-meant whipping”, which helps explain the attitude towards abuse.
“Competitive sport is war without gunfire,” said Fan Hong, a former swimmer and academic, describing Beijing’s attitude toward gold medals.
A few years ago it was claimed that Ma Junren, a renowned track coach, made Olympics hopefuls run a marathon a day.
At his training camps athletes were said to be told to eat “traditional medicine” caterpillar fungus and drink turtles’ blood.
Then eyebrows were raised further when it emerged scientists from former East Germany, discredited over drugs allegations, were involved in China’s sports programme.
In one horrendous case two years ago a football player who asked his coach what time he started training the following day died after he was kicked in the chest and fell striking his head.
The authorities could not turn a blind eye and the coach was sentenced to three years in jail for manslaughter. Officials insist the use of violence is not condoned.
In the West these methods are repellent but as Daley found to his cost, the Chinese are reaping the benefits, turning out performers such as Qiu Bo in the diving pool who reeled off a series of perfect scores in Shanghai.
In Beijing China won 51 gold medals, dwarfing its nearest rival the US which took 36.
IT IS the result of a plan started 10 years ago, codenamed Project 119, in which Chinese officials identified that number of gold medals available in the nation’s weaker sports.
Millions of yuan were poured into events such as swimming, boxing, rowing and athletics. It also reflects Chinese thinking that one gold medal is worth a thousand silvers and elite athletes now receive more than 80 per cent of the nation’s entire budget for sport.
Frank Dick, a former director of coaching for British athletics, says: “We are going to have to brace our- selves. China is improving in sports in which it has not been traditionally strong.
We know all about
table tennis, diving and gymnastics but China’s mentality is that being top of the Olympics medal table proves that it is a powerful country.
“Before the Beijing Olympics China studied and adopted the best training regimes from all over the world. China was determined to do well in its home Olympics. We don’t know exactly what China’s training methods are now but in cultures like our own that level of intensity would not be acceptable.”
Another expert, who works for an organisation producing British elite athletes, adds: “If someone in China is not performing there are another 10 ready to take his place. We might have one or two top competitors in a sport but in China there are often 10 or more.”
China’s more open approach to the rest of the world has also provided an added boost for its sports programmes. For the first time the best Western coaches are being lured to the Far East, tempted by large salaries.
However some coaches have been shocked by what they have seen. Tom Maher, an Australian coach of China’s women’s basketball team in 2008, said: “The logic [in China] is if two hours training is good, four must be better.”
He recalled athletes being woken at 3.45am for a 10-mile run, followed by a weight-lifting session before breakfast.
Before the Beijing Olympics Matthew Pinsent, Britain’s gold-medal winning rower who is no stranger to sacrifice for his sport, visited a gymnastics training centre.
He said: “I was shocked. I do think those kids are being abused.” At the training camps there are flags and slogans. At the main table-tennis training camp a red banner with Chinese characters reads: “Future champions go from
here to the world.”
Inevitably the system has echoes of the way athletes were treated in the Soviet Union. Earlier this month one of China’s most promising gymnasts was found begging on the street.
Zhang Shangwu, 28, was cast adrift after suffering a career-ending injury, which left him unable to work. He had to sell his gold medals for £10 each to pay for food.
In Shanghai last week Tom Daley branded his Chinese rival “unstoppable” and by the time the opening ceremony for the 2012 Games begins the divers from China will have practised for thousands of hours more than any of our athletes.
It won’t be the sound of Bow bells but the strains of China’s national anthem ringing out from the East End of London next summer.
This is by no means the only article that may be found on the Internet regarding the methods used by the Chinese to command excellence through fear in their youngest and most vulnerable athletes. And such practices are by no means confined to China. They occur and can occur in any country in which athletic accomplishment and national prestige are regarded as more important than the welfare of child athletes who are regarded and treated as little more than child indentured servants.
