Feature: All for Games in Guangdong, Sports for All in China

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, November 25, 2001

Feature: All for Games in Guangdong, Sports for All in China

In a southern Chinese province known of its vigorous, dynamic business and varied, delicious food, people witnessed 13-day-long sporting competitions with characteristics of their own.

In a southern Chinese province known of its vigorous, dynamic business and varied, delicious food, people witnessed 13-day-long sporting competitions with characteristics of their own.

And the 45 participating delegations including those from the Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative Regions bagged medals as well as ideas and thoughts they thought valuable for further pondering over back home, as China's Ninth National Games closed here on Sunday.

Guangdong Province, hosts of China's first major sporting event in the new century, called an end to the quadrennial national event, with the local team atop the final medal tally with 69.5 gold medals. Northeastern Liaoning Province was second with 41 golds and the Chinese People's Liberation Army squad ranked third with 33.

East China's Jiangsu Province shall host the next national games in 2005.

The national games, an event second only to the Olympic Games in terms of status and importance to Chinese athletes, came out a successful parade of the country's sporting capabilities and also served to span Chinese sports from the 20th to the new century.

Li Furong, Vice-minister of the State General Administration of Sports, praised the games staged by south China's Guangdong Province "a high-level parade of the vitality of the country's competitive sports" and said the event "has written a new page in the national games history".

Modern Facilities Mushroomed

Guangdong Province has invested a total of four billion yuan (4. 8 million US dollars) for infrastructure projects while provincial capital Guangzhou had put in 1.8 billion yuan (218 million US dollars) for the construction of five games facilities.

Setting a precedent in the games history, the Guangdong event's organizers had invited international bidders for designing three major venues -- the Guangdong Olympic Stadium, the Guangzhou Gymnasium and the International Rowing Center.

The Kansas City-based Ellerbe Becket joined in project architect Nixon & Nixon to win the bid to design the Olympic Stadium. The 80,000-seat facility with a floor space of 145,000 square meters eventually cost 1.2 billion yuan (140 million US dollars).

The Guangzhou Gymnasium is the workpiece of French architect Paul Andreu, who also designed the giant National Theater in downtown Beijing. The gymnasium consists of three oval-shaped structures that well resemble petals of a bombax flower, the city' s floral emblem.

The competitions were held in 15 cities in the province, with many at newly-built facilities, which distinguished the games here from the previsou versions.

Numerous Records Cracked

A total of seven world records in women's weightlifting events, six Asian records in swimming, cycling and track and field events as well as 37 national records had been bettered.

Swimming was one of the most record-productive sports here, with six world's best times set and some results ranked among this year's world top three.

Chen Yan from east China's Zhejiang Province clocked four minutes 35.22 seconds in women's 400 meters individual medley and 2:11.79 in the 200m event; Zhang Liang of the Chinese Army clocked 4:06.97 in women's 400m freestyle and 1:58.11 in 100m freestyle; Luo Xuejuan from Zhejiang clocked 1:06.96 in 100m breaststroke and Shanghai team were timed at 7:56.52 in women's 4x200m freestyle relay.

But worries surfaced again, as at the previous games four years ago. After their record-breaking performance in the Shanghai pool, Chinese swimming suffered a severe blow as several athletes were tested positive for banned drugs during out-of-competition tests later that year and suspended.

Zhao Ge, head coach of the national swimming team, declined to take the success in Guangzhou as a poof that Chinese swimming has recovered from the Sydney slump. Instead, he took it just a start of a maturing process, at most. "It's not the time to celebrate," he warned.

Zhang Qiuping, Vice-president of Chinese Swimming Association and a Bureau member of the sport's world governing body FINA, declined to be overexcited. "We can't be called a world power until after our male swimmers can enter the finals and win medals, as our female swimmers have achieved, in world-class competitions. "

"Some of our swimmers often fail to do as well abroad as in domestic competitions," said world champion breaststroke swimmer Luo Xuejuan. "One needs to prove his or her capability at world- class events," she claimed.

"What we have done in the world championships in Fukuoka and the national games here could only be considered as a process for the swimmers to grow up. It is the right time now to start our preparations for the 2004 and 2008 Olympic Games," Zhang said.

No Mercy to Doping Cheats

China has shown no mercy in its fight against doping offenses as more sophisticated means and state-of-art facilities are put in place to detect the use of banned drugs. Blood test, which aims to scrutinize the use of performance-enchancing erythropoietin ( EPO), has been adopted for the first time for the national games.

The national games organizers had adopted 1,349 doping tests including 28 on racing horses, and 320 blood tests. They had disqualified an athlete for failing to report for a blood test and asked six athletes to quit the event for abnormal blood test results, for their health.

Of a total of 1,321 urine samples provided for tests, eight came out positive and athletes and teams involved had been punished.

All the samples were air-lifted to the Beijing-based China Anti- doping Testing Center, which, recognized by the ISO Guide 25 and the IOC.

Any athlete was immediately disqualified from the games, once his or her urine sample A as tested positive. "This is a tougher than usual measure," said Zhang Changjiu, anti-doping chief of the organizing committee. "We don't allow any loop-holes to possible doping cheaters," said Zhang.

A supervisory panel was also set up to monitor the doping control, to double lock the door against any doping cheats, according to Zhang.

Joy Mixed with Worries

Chinese have dominated such sports as women's weightlifting and diving for so long that Chinese divers had been dubbed as "dream teams" both at the Sydney Olympic Games and world swimming championships last July in Fukuoka. Chinese divers won five out of the eight gold medals in Sydney while in Fukuoka, eight out of the 10 gold medals on offer were bagged home by the Chinese.

But these victories did hot stop Zhou Jihong, a former Olympic champion who is now the head of China's national diving team, from worrying about the future. "We have problems in springboard events," she said after watching the national games here.

China faces a lack of successors, with Guo Jingjing seemingly to take over as the leader for women's three-meter springboard after the withdrawal and eventual retirement of the country's " diving queen" Fu Mingxia. But there are no enough younger faces, said Zhou, who is here also for hunting talents.

The situation for the synchronized springboard events is even worse, Zhou said. "We face a serious challenge from our rivals," she admitted.

A cry for new bloods could also be visible in such other sports as basketball, volleyball, field hockey and, most lately, women's soccer.

Efforts Called to Narrow East-West Gap

As in the economic field, China's West had long been less developed in sports as well. Sports officials of the western Chinese regions admitted a long way ahead before they could match the economically advanced areas, mainly along the country's coastal line while their athletes, however, had given impressive performance at the national games here.

Huang Qiuyan, a 21-year-old defending champion from Zhuang, a minority nationality in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, won the women's triple jump title with an Asian record distance of 14.72 meters, on her third attempt.

Wang Hailan, 25, from China's southernmost province of Hainan, is of China's another minority nationality, took the pentathlon silver medal at the national games.

Joining them was Olympic weightlifting champion from the Sydney Games Yang Xia, who took the women's 53kg category title at the national games here, is from Tujia nationality of Hunan Province.

"It's time for us to change our concept on sports, to work out preferential policies and dig deep for great sporting potential in the West," said Jijia, head of southwestern China's Tibet Autonomous Region.

A lack of funds, talents and technics had hampered the western regions' overall sports development, which sometimes even force them to abandon some events to concentrate limited funds on the remaining ones.

Ma Jilong, an official with the northwest China's Sha'anxi Province, suggested that the national sports authorities take similar measures like in the economic field. High-level coaches based in the eastern Chinese provinces could be assigned to work in the West for some time to help coach the local teams, he said.

Some experts proposed that the western regions focus on their superiority sports and events, instead of seeking an all-round efforts in sports

Aiming High

Leading officials of the State General Administration of Sports and the country's sports associations have been boosted by their achievements in Guangzhou and have set their sights on major international events to come.

The Chinese Modern Pentathlon Association has worked out an ambitious eight-year development program, with such targets as three golds at next year's Asian Games in Pusan, a gold medal at the 2004 Olympics in Athens and four golds at the 2006 Asian Games in Doha, Quater.

The Chinese Wrestling Association officials said they had worked out a plan for winning Olympic honor at the Athens Games, especially in the freestyle events. A women's national training camp would be set up this winter, face a possible listing of women 's wrestling as an Olympic event.

Liu Fengyan, Vice-president of the Chinese Badminton Association, said badminton needs further reforms to face increasing challenges, both on competition courts and marketing affairs. China has targeted two to three gold medals at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.

Jin Guoxiang, a Shanghai sports official, said Shanghai had started planning for the 2002 Asian Games and the 2004 and 2008 Olympic Games. He pledged a greater contribution at the 2004 Olympic Games than at Sydney -- three gold medals.

Shanghai athletes had done well in China's various Olympic outings, with star woman swimmers Zhuang Yong and Yang Wenyi winning gold medal apiece at the 1992 Games in Barcelona and Le Jingyi taking a gold in Atlanta. Shanghai's woman shooter Tao Luna won China's first gold medal of the 2000 Games in Sydney and table tennis players Wang Liqin and Yan Sen took the top honor in men's doubles event there.

"We'd try to contribute more at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing," Jin added.

Talents Trade a Controversial Issue

Ever since the Shanghai games in 1997, temporary talents trade has become a popular part in various delegations' build-up for the Guangdong games. Over 2,000 athletes, twice the Shanghai games figure, had been temporarily traded. If any athlete wins a gold medal for a team he or she temporarily represents for the games, the native team and the team he or she represents shall split the medal, for their respective medal standings.

While delegations from the developed areas enjoyed the trade, saying such win-win deals help both sides learn from each other's strong points and offset their weakness, some sports officials criticized it as a utilitarian practice. It had encouraged people just to "buy" competent athletes for quick wins instead of training their own athletes up to a higher standard, a coach of the Beijing delegation said. "What good after all does this for the real benefit of local sports?" he asked.

"The national games should provide chances to talented athletes as part of China's preparations for major international events. If such a practice is widely adopted, who would bother in the future to bring up their own athletes to back the country's overall sporting standard?" he added.

To limit such trade to a normal scale, such Chinese associations as that for badminton had set a limitation. Shutters who had participated in world championships, World Cup meets or Olympic Games had been prohibited to be traded for the national games.

Overall Olympic Program

Many of China's local sports authorities had focused on their national games build-up, even at the cost of skipping such major international events as this year's world gymnastics and weightlifting championships. Increasing pressure had made local coaches tend to pick up young blood just for victories at the quadrennial national event.

"The psychology to seek quick success and instant benefits had led many astray, which harms the fundamental of weightlifting, men 's events in particular," said Yang Hanxiong, head coach of the national team. He blamed this for China's poor performance in heavier categories.

Yuan Weimin, Minister of the State General Administration of Sports, called on efforts right from now to China's preparations for both the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens and the 2008 Games in Beijing.

In a comprehensive interview with Xinhua, Yuan said that China was still distant from top-flight world sports powers, as its limited total number of sports teams, less developed scientific training and shortage of funds for training base construction could tell.

For more and better Olympic results at the 2008 Games than before, efforts should be made right from now on, Yuan said.

Yuan insisted that the country should stick to the "Olympic Glory" program and the preparation and staging of the next national games in 2005 should be well arranged for this general target.

Yuan also urged attention be paid in fields as the strengthening of traditional and superiority sports and events, promotion of sports where Chinese are potential to win international honors, seeking for breakthrough in sports as track and field, swimming and aquatic events and efforts on popular team sports as soccer, basketball and volleyball and newly introduced Olympic sports.

Further reforms are urged as well, for future national games and national intercity games, potential athletes and other new blood should be picked up for the national teams as well as for the 2008 Olympic Games, Yuan added.

As the whole Guangdong Province celebrated its success in hosting the national games, the whole country is making steady efforts for the further implementation of the "Sports for All" national fitness program set in 1995. The shining progress displayed in the 2001 national games has proved the effectiveness of the program in raising the overall health standard of the Chinese people. It is also expected to upgrade China's all-round build-up for more Olympic glory at the 2004 and 2008 Games.

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