BEIJING --
The screech of saws mixed with the screams of tall, lean women spiking
volleyballs. The pounding of hammers accented the slap-slap of sneakers on
the teenage boxers jogging past scaffolding in a parking lot.
The chalk dust flying from young gymnasts' hands floated inside the
gymnasium like the construction dust that escaped the protective green
netting outside the building where the athletes were training.
That counterpoint of resolute effort in sports and construction at
Beijing's renowned Shichahai Sports School, undergoing a facelift before
its 50th anniversary in 2008, also is the underlying harmony of a city
building toward the 2008 Olympic Games, determined to show a fresh face to
the world.
"The Olympics is bringing improvement in the environment and
equipment at our school," said badminton player Deng Xiao, 22, who
has attended the select boarding school for 12 years. "For an athlete,
the Olympics is a bigger room to express themselves in. For China and
Beijing, it is a chance to develop the country and the city."
Film star Jet Li, known then only as a child named Li Lianjie, learned
wushu, or martial arts, in the early 1970s at Shichahai, one of Beijing's
eight elite sports schools. Four of China's 2004 Olympic champions, in
gymnastics, volleyball, taekwondo and table tennis, began their sports
development at the school, which calls itself "the cradle of world
champions" and "the origin of Olympic talents" despite
facilities that clearly are showing their age.
"For all Chinese, it is very exciting to have the Olympic Games, to
show to all the world what we have achieved." said Liu Yan Bin, the
school's vice principal and a former table tennis player. "For me,
the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics will be the most important
moment of my life."
For China, the world's most populous nation, it should be a giant
coming-out party (with the emphasis on giant), as the 1964 Olympics was
for Japan and the 1988 Games for South Korea. For Beijing, the countdown
to Aug. 8, 2008, increased the already frenetic pace of transformation of
this city with 15.3 million people and seemingly as many construction
sites.
Hammers and saws and cranes and backhoes run seven days a week, day and
night, so there is little danger Beijing will scramble to meet its Olympic
construction deadlines the way Athens did in 2004.
Two years ago the International Olympic Committee urged the Chinese to
slow the pace of construction to manage cash flow better.
So Beijing backed off its promise to have all 31 of the city's venues (11
new, the others renovated or modified) ready by 2006 and settled for a
completion date by the end of 2007.
Supports for the latticework superstructure of the 91,000-seat Olympic
Stadium came off three weeks ago, making the stadium's "Bird's
Nest" concept clearly visible. A few hundred yards to the west,
workers have been installing the blue skin of the "Water Cube"
aquatics center, among the venues that will blend striking architecture
with high-tech, as the skin will capture energy used to warm the pools.
The attractive but comparatively mundane softball stadium, the first new
venue to be completed, was used for the quadrennial World Softball
Championships this summer.
Chinese officials also have tried to slow down fervent expectations,
engendered by continuously rising nationalism and a best-ever performance
in Athens, that their athletes could topple the United States as the
Olympic Games superpower. China won only three fewer gold medals--but 40
fewer overall medals--than the United States in 2004.
"Our aim is not to leave the 2008 Olympic Games with the most medals
but to have a better level in many of our sports," Shichahai's Liu
said.
"China is not at the same level as America in sports like basketball,
swimming and track. For track, we only have (Olympic hurdles champion) Liu
Xiang but America has many top stars."
China's women did rise to world leadership in swimming and distance
running in the mid-1990s, but that achievement was tainted by both doping
and accusations that the distance runners, conditioned to "eat
bitterness," were subjected to a dehumanizing and brutal training
regime. Since then, Chinese women have been virtually non-factors in both
sports, removing a lightning rod for criticism that might have scuttled
their 2008 Olympic bid.
After visiting Shichahai last November, British Olympic champion and
former IOC member Matthew Pinsent alleged young gymnasts were being abused,
calling what he saw a "disturbing experience." Pinsent, who had
criticized the IOC's 2001 decision to award the Olympics to Beijing, said
in a BBC report he observed gymnasts in obvious pain and at least one boy
who admitted to a translator that a coach had beaten him.
Liu Hong Bin, the school's deputy director, told BBC Sport that training
was deliberately hard to toughen up the children and that some parents
asked that corporal punishment be used.
IOC President Jacques Rogge said cultural differences could have affected
Pinsent's perceptions, noting Britain had used corporal punishment in its
schools until the 1970s. Rogge nevertheless asked Chinese Olympic
authorities about the situation and was told what Pinsent saw was an
isolated incident out of line with normal training practices in China.
A journalist visiting the school last week saw a different atmosphere.
There were determined but smiling 7-year-old gymnasts, taekwondo athletes
laughing as they played an elimination game in a warm-up exercise and
badminton players with bemused expressions of delighted disbelief after a
heated rally that lasted several minutes.
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