BEIJING, (Reuters) – China’s success at the Beijing Olympics was a vindication of its state supported sports system and there will be few changes before the London Games in 2012, according to deputy sports minister Cui Dalin.
Cui was leader of the China delegation which put the gloss on the Games for the hosts last August by winning 51 golds, 21 silvers and 28 bronzes to top the medals table for the first time.
“I felt we benefited from the advantages of our state system,” Cui told Reuters in an interview in the run up to the first anniversary of the Beijing Games.
“In the next stage of preparation for the London Olympics, I think we will still uphold our long-time key to success, which is a good state system.
“In these new times, particularly under the market economy, certainly we will improve and enrich it (but) we will work on the preparation for the London Games as hard as we did for Beijing.”
China’s sports system was established in the 1950s on the Soviet model and was supporting 23,000 athletes in 2007.
A pyramid structure, sports schools at the bottom feed provincial teams, who in turn provide athletes for the elite national squads.
The criticism levelled at the system is that the focus on elite performance, and Olympic golds, works to the detriment of grassroots activity in a country where less than 30 percent of people regularly participate in sport.
Cui and his colleagues at the ministry of sport have been made aware from the very top that they need to focus more on the great mass of people who will never stand on top of the Olympic podium while “The March of the Volunteers” anthem is played.
“The future challenge of Chinese sports I think is how to adjust to the socialist market economic system to develop both competitive sports and national fitness,” said Cui.
“After the Beijing Olympics, President Hu Jintao required that China should move from being a big sporting country to being a strong sporting country, a goal that we are still far away from.
“The gap lies in people’s awareness of sports, investment into sports, the construction of venues and facilities, the standard of the sports and the balanced development of the competitive sporting events.”
ONE BLEMISH
That will take money, of course, and happily for Cui and his colleagues, China’s economic opening up has also offered new ways of supplementing government funding through sponsorships and the like. “China’s sports are mainly supported by the government funding, but we also have marketing development in recent years…,” Cui said.
“The central government will not cut our administrative budget even though we make money from the sports lottery and marketing. State funding will not be cut.”
All is not rosy in the garden of Chinese sport, however, and the national athletics team head off for this month’s world championships without much hope of a title, while scandal-ridden soccer continues to be a national joke.
Cui said the only blemish on the Chinese delegation’s “generally perfect performance” at the Beijing Games was soccer.
China’s men failed to advance past the group stage while the women’s team were knocked out by Japan in the quarter-finals.
“Chinese people were unhappy with its low standard … we really want to improve this sport through our continuous work.”
Hard work has certainly paid off in swimming with four golds, two silvers and four bronzes at the recent world championships in Rome, a “cheering result” for Cui in a sport where China has rarely shone since the dope-tainted achievements of the 1990s.
Cui was well known for downplaying China’s chances of topping the medals in Beijing last year and, having been proved so spectacularly wrong, is wary of making predictions for London.
There is no doubt, though, that for Cui at least, the Olympic gold standard is still the ultimate measure of success.
“I cannot predict the number of gold medals the Chinese team can win at the London Olympics,” he said. “But we will strive to deliver our best performance and get a good payoff.”
