Although the Chinese excel in certain sports, many of the Middle Kingdom’s best athletes are notorious choke artists who disappoint almost as often as they impress. Maybe their inconsistency has something to do with China’s system of athletic development.
Whatever the case, conventional wisdom held that in ’08 a hometown crowd would drive Chinese athletes to overcome their performance anxiety and shine as brightly as the five stars on the country’s national flag. Yet some of China’s most high-profile athletes have delivered underwhelming performances in the last couple of months, revealing cracks in the country’s veneer of invincibility that could prove portentous in August.
The first ill omen came when Guo Jinging stumbled during the women’s 3m springboard preliminary at the FINA Diving World Series in Nanjing on May 30 and failed to advance to the finals. Unsubstantiated pregnancy rumors may have contributed to her subpar performance. Or maybe an explanation can be found at the bottom of a baijiu bottle. I have it on good authority that Guo drank too much, then threw up at a party in mid-May.
In fact, China’s entire diving team has been looking less than stellar as of late. During the sixth leg of this year's FINA Diving Grand Prix, which concluded on June 9 and took place in Rostock, Germany, China won only five out of eight gold medals. Such is China’s diving dominance that anything less than a sweep is considered disappointing.
That was the third time in less than two months that China failed to capture diving titles it once won effortlessly. During the fourth leg in Montreal in May, China failed to walk away with gold in both the men's 10m synchronized platform and the women's 10m platform. A week before Montreal’s frustrating finals, at a World Series in Mexico, China lost three events - the men's 3m springboard, men's 10m synchronized platform and women's 10m platform. The losses by top pair Lin Yue and Huo Liang in the men's 10m synchronized platform at Mexico and then again at Montreal were especially surprising since they hadn’t lost since 2006.
All of which led team manager Zhou Jihong to declare early last month, "I do not think we have an absolute advantage over our opponents anymore." Granted, critics have cast aspersions on the team’s preparedness in the past only to see China reign supreme at the Olympics. But it’s not just China’s divers who are having trouble delivering the goods with less than six weeks remaining before the opening ceremonies kick off on August 8. Another athlete who has seen his unquestioned advantage in a particular event evaporate is hurdler Liu Xiang.
First Liu withdrew from the Reebok Grand Prix on May 31, citing a tight hamstring. Then he was disqualified from the Prefontaine Classic Grand Prix on June 8 when he false started. And then Cuban hurdler Dayron Robles ran a faultless race to clock 12.87 at the IAAF Grand Prix meeting in Ostrava, Czech Republic, shaving one-hundredth of a second off of the previous record set by Liu in July, 2006.
Robles has since been gracious in his praise of Liu, insisting that he believes “at least five guys can win in Beijing, but Liu is the favorite. He is the guy to beat.” Regardless, Chinese sport czars must be understandably concerned that their golden boy could walk away with silver and lose face (horror of horrors) as well as first place.
And any hope that a new generation of Chinese athletes will rise to the top at the Beijing Games seems to be fading fast. Cui Dalin, Deputy Minister of Sport, previously admitted that the country's ambitious Project 119 had failed to yield the bumper crop of young talent that the Chinese government had hoped to cultivate in anticipation of hosting the big O.
If the Chinese soccer team is any indication, there won’t be many surprise upsets for China in August. The national team will not be going to the World Cup in 2010 after finishing last in their group on June 14 with a loss to Iraq. Competing in a relatively easy group – China vied with Iraq, Qatar, and Australia (the only acknowledged powerhouse among the four) for a place on the South African pitch – China failed to win a single game.
The team has only ever qualified for the World Cup once, in 2002, but was quickly eliminated in the first round without scoring a single goal. While soccer is hugely popular in China (I remember crowds of people gathering to watch the World Cup finals in 2006 on TVs that their neighbors had set up outside on the sidewalks at absurd hours of the night because of the time difference), yet the national team remains decidedly unimpressive.
Regardless of whether these recent failings can be attributed to the curse of 2008, Machiavellian machinations meant to lull foreign competitors into a false sense of security, or simply nerves, only time will tell. The only sure thing these days seems to be a sense of uncertainty.
