No Pain, No Gold Medal

At first I could hear them whimper, then fear crept into the fifty children’s eyes. After all, any one of them could be next. A cry of pain suddenly filled the shabby gymnasium, reaching as high as the corrugated iron roof. Several days before China was awarded the Olympics in July 2001 I visited Xiantao, a nondescript town located near the Yangtze River in Central China. I wanted to see the future 2008 champions firsthand.

A boy is lying on his back on the floor, naked apart from his white pants adorned with the face of Mickey Mouse. Coach Zhang pushes the six-year-old's right leg down to the ground. Then, lifting the other leg to his knee with his foot touching the mat, he performs reversed splits – 10 seconds that seem to go on for an eternity. It’s as if some lifeless rubber bands are holding the child's body together and not sensitive tendons. The boy resembles a long line that's somehow been glued to the floor – the only thing rebelling against the state of order is his chest, which he is wrenching in pain. The little gymnast's cry slowly dies out and is replaced by a tearful moaning. Zhang, a stocky but well-trained former military coach, orders him to: “Sing, go ahead and sing!” His voice shaky and eyes watered with tears, the words come out of the child's mouth: “Men made out of iron don't cry. We want to be heroes. Victors! Take home the gold.”

The man who wrote these lines to help the athletes stay the course, takes a deep breath and lets out a sigh. “Sometimes this breaks my heart,” he says. “But is top performance possible without this pain?” Director Zhang Yongping has amiable eyes. He dyes his gray hair black like his president, Jiang Zemin. And he raises Olympic champions using the credo: “Beat them once, comfort them three times and praise them.” To motivate his students he tells them tales about the more than 1,000 world records beaten by Chinese athletes, about the female volleyball team that won the world championships six times in a row in the 1980s. And he tells them about his own achievements. Since Barcelona in 1992, at least one of his protégés has taken home the gold from each Summer Olympic Games.

“The golden phoenix rises from a miserable chicken's nest,” star coach Yan says with a laugh. Cracks in the glass windows meander like the Mekong in its delta. The glass is missing from some of the windows, and Yan’s staff has covered the holes with plastic to protect against the torrential summer rain. Instead, the outside heat mercilessly presses into the gym. And the cob webs on four of the gym’s eight ventilators make it clear that they have long been broken. But the Chinese are world champions when it comes to far exceeding expectations with only modest means. In impoverished mountain villages, I have seen children use old pine doors to play table tennis. They used two bricks and a thick bamboo stick for a net. In spite ilof that, or perhaps because of that sense of ingenuity, Chinese players are winning almost every gold medal at the table tennis world championships.

It’s no different here. The mats in Xiantao’s gymnasium are so tattered that little pieces of rubber foam are scattered across the floor like crumbs. Cracks have formed in the leather of the vault. And the climbing pole on the wall is made of iron that the director picked up himself at a shipyard on the Yangtze and then welded together twenty years ago.

“Progress is fast here,” he says, expressing his obvious joy. “Fifteen years ago there were no mats. We had to practice on straw.” He’s painted the board on the wall with black characters. Today’s slogan: “Lay a strong foundation, boost talent and grab the gold.” The only luxury here is a glass photo case at the front of the gym. It shows the Olympic champions director Yan has raised.