My crystal ball works, no doubt!

As of tonight, China has won 47 gold medals. It’s probably still too early to say, but it doesn’t appear that USA can get anywhere close to this number in Beijing. There are at least 2 more gold medals that China has more than a good chance to win: Men’s Table Tennis, and Men 10m Board Diving. If veteran Taekwondo athletes CHEN Zhong (陈中) can keep up with her previous record and win gold in the Women over 67kg competition, China’s gold medal count will hit 50.

This will be the highest number of gold medals won by a county since Seoul 1988 (Soviet Union won 55 that year). There are a lot of hypes lately on how China is beating USA in the number of gold medals. I, however, never thought that much of USA’s so called “leadership” position on the medal chart.

Since Soviet Union began to participate in the Summer Olympics in 1952, until its last participation as “Former Soviet Union” in 1992, USA had only won more gold than Soviet Union twice, in 1952 (Helsinki) and 1968 (Mexico City). As a matter of fact, USA has never won more than 45 gold medals (in Mexico City, 1968) in any Summer games other than Los Angeles in 1984 (USA got 80, as the game was boycotted by the Soviet Block). Therefore, if the Americans have dominated the summer games in any way, we are talking about only 3 Olympics in recent history: 1996 (Atlanta), 2000 (Sydney) and 2004 (Athens). So, what’s the big deal?

46 seems like a big number. But honestly, I’m not very surprised by the result. It might sound like hindsight 20-20. But I know that was coming. I think having Beijing as the host city has only brought that forward by a little bit.

I can further predict: China will win even more medals in London in 2012. If things remain how it is, China will dominate the gold medal chart in all the Olympics from this point on.

You don’t think so? I have a lot of good reasons to believe this:

(a) The large population pool: YAO Ming was interviewed by China Daily after the Chinese Men Basketball Team’s loss to Lithuania. He made a remark that could be seen as very arrogant to some. He said that 45 gold medals (the count when he was interviewed) was a historical number for China’s participation in the Olympics, but if you see that in the perspective of a 1.3 billion population, the number is actually very small. What Yao said in fact makes a lot of sense. With a 1.3 billion population pool, China has the advantage of finding the best talents in practically any sports.

(b) State Planning: While most of the western countries’ government might have departments responsible for sports, they only play a coordination role. China has a State Sports Bureau (国家体育总局) to plan and run Sports as an enterprise. On top of managing the “sustainable development” of many sports in China, the bureau will also identify sport that has a high potential to be developed. It will then source and recruit the talents and develop a training program. You can certainly see that China is emerging fast in some newer Olympic sports like Beach Volleyball, Taekwundo and Synchronized Swimming in the recent years. When it comes to the time of international competitions, the Bureau will strategize and coordinate the best ways to enhance China’s chances for gold medals. The “double insurance” strategy (双保险, which means having at least 2 athletes getting into the quarterfinals or final round of some of the events) in Beijing Olympics is a very good example.

(c) Intensive training at young age: A lot of the identified sports talents in China are sent to Sports Schools (体育学校) for training at a very young age. Most of the young Chinese gymnasts and divers have left their families when they were only 6 or 7 years old. Other than Cuba and North Korea, I can’t think of another country that put athletes through this kind of immersive and intensive training at such a young age. (The Soviet block countries used to do this. But I would doubt if Russia and other Eastern European countries are still doing this in large scale nowadays.) Practically speaking, Chinese athletes have received intensive training 3-5 years earlier than their western counterparts, and have become full time athletes 5-10 years earlier.

(d) Financial resources: While most of the western countries are relying on corporate sponsorship and commercial endorsement to support the athletes’ living and training, China is fully backing sports development with government money. Billions of yuan are put into training program and research every year.

Lo and behold. China will top the medal chart again in 2012, 2016, 2020…

Trust me, my crystal ball does work.

But who would need one for this, anyway…

By the way, New York Times has produced a very interesting and informative chart to show the medal standing in all of the previous modern Olympics. Go and take a look…
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/08/04/sports/olympics/20080804_MEDALCOUNT_MAP.html