Leading up to the Games, Beijing's tsars of sport took pains to lowball medals projections in the conservative fashion of its economic planners. In the end the Chinese squad far outstripped its softly stated goal of 40 golds. With 51, China is the first nation to crack the 50 mark since the USSR won 55 in 1988. It's a phenomenal achievement, but what to make of it? The host nation's sweet showing was undercut by bitter controversy over its female gymnasts' ages, the numbing disappointment of its sole track star Liu Xiang, and the perennial critique that Team China is just the latest gargantuan image project - if the Party builds it, the medals will come.
It therefore seemed fitting that China's last couple golds came in the embattled event of boxing. I spent much of the weekend in the circular gallery of the Workers Gymnasium, a musty gem of Soviet-inspired monumentalism. There I saw China's fighters scrap their way on up from a single bronze at Athens to one bronze, one silver and two gold medals in Beijing. One of those two golds, the country's first, was won by the reigning world champ without much of a fight. The other came courtesy of a dark horse with a motivational tattoo of a winged Pegasus on his left arm, not to mention a major boost from the crowd and the benefit of the doubt from the judges. If you think the regurgitated debate over medals rankings is going to be a tough one to ever resolve - given America's historic focus on cumulative medals versus China’s (and many other nations') on gold - try judging the victor of an Olympic boxing bout.
In the light heavyweight final, Zhang Xiaoping outmaneuvered Ireland's Kenny Egan by a tally of 11-7. It was Zhang's second straight upset, and if conventional wisdom in our press section was any indication, the scoring was dubious both times. In the semifinal on Friday, a timid-looking Zhang scrapped to a 4-4 tie with Kazakh Yerkebulan Shynaliyev through four rounds, forcing a decision on countback. Shynaliyev had whipped Zhang by 13 points in the quarterfinals of the world championships in Chicago late last year. When the referee hoisted Zhang's hand this time, even the home crowd sounded mildly flabbergasted, releasing a wondrous roar. Another journalist and I turned to one another and shook our heads. Afterward Shynaliyev insisted that he would have won had he not developed pain in his shoulder in the second round. Zhang just pointed to his Pegasus tattoo. "People have been calling me a dark horse, but I will fly higher."
For Egan on Sunday, it took square blows to the head or torso to score points, while Zhang racked up many of his off his back foot. In a couple cases Zhang scored after he and Egan were entangled or had barely brushed at all, making it hard to discern where the points came from. But points are points. After getting out in front early, Zhang stood rounds two and three before pussyfooting the final minute. As the clock ticked down a red sea of Chinese fans were enrapt, while a rowdy pocket of Irish among them were livid. “Over the past two weeks I don’t think anyone’s appreciated how hard it’s been,” Egan winged afterward. “Shoulder slaps get scored.” He was accepting of silver - "brilliant" he called it. But in a very awkward moment on the medal stands, he peered up at Zhang, clutched the gold slung from Zhang’s neck and kissed it, as though claiming it were his. Twelve hours later, around 3 a.m., I would spot Egan blowing offf steam nearby at the raucous Irish-style pub Paddy O'Shea's. Ah, the luck of the Chinese. What's a brawler to do?
In fact it was just part of the bargain in Olympic boxing. The scoring system has been shrouded in scrutiny for decades now, and the International Boxing Association has been subsumed in a perennial state of reform since the Roy Jones, Jr. fiasco in Seoul in 1988, where a number of protested decisions nearly got the sport booted from the Games. Now, under an electronic scoring system first implemented after Seoul to improve transparency, at least three of the five judges must ring in within a second of a punch for the boxer to tally a point, while the judges and referees of each match are randomly assigned by computer. But the boxing world’s efforts at house-cleaning sort of remind one of China’s Communist Party’s never-ending war on corruption. With so much money and glory riding on a match, the risk of fixing is endemic.
The AIBA revealed that two months prior to the Games it was informed of “a possible attempt on the part of certain individuals, both within the organization and within the competition officials, to manipulate the competition.” The revelation came after Rudi Obreja, a technical delegate and president of the Romanian federation, called a spur-of-the-moment press conference to accuse colleagues of meddling in the process of selecting match officials. The AIBA responded by suspending Obreja for breaking protocol and announcing an investigation.
After watching Zhang's unlikely win and a couple other close contests, I sat in on another a predictably heated presser. AIBA bosses vehemently defended efforts to democratize the scoring, while journalists clearly frustrated from covering the event pressed them to explain why even they couldn’t agree consistently how bouts were being scored, let alone the average spectator. Disciplinary commission chair Tom Virgets acknowledged the system remained less-than-perfect but maintained the better fighter won 90 or 95 percent of the time. An AIBA communiqué stated, as evidence of the improvement, that in 249 fights to that point only four boxers had filed protests. The reason so few countries had protested, one journalist contended, is that they know it's no use.
Fortunately, there was no disputing China's 50th gold. Light flyweight Zou Shiming is the world's premier amateur in the 48 kg class and represents a feel-good argument for how the state's largesse can produce a new breed of model sports hero. What a compelling story Zou is, having taken up wushu to toughen up as an adolescent after his mother raised the boy as if he were a girl. Foreign press have given him nicknames like the "fox" or the "pirate", a bit pettily, for his elusive style of snatching points. In the end his Olympic conquest proved more anticlimactic than he himself had wished. Mongolian Serdamba Purevdorj retired with a hurt shoulder 20 seconds into Round Two. But Zou delivered the moments of raw emotion afterward. After telling himself he could not cry on the podium, he choked up one verse into the playing of the Chinese national anthem. Then the easy-going Guizhou lad, who could soon turn pro, declared to reporters that he had "shown the whole world the strength of the Chinese people."
Asked what food had fuelled him during his Olympic campaign, Zou said he'd been on a steady diet of Western fare such as burgers and pizza, particularly pizza (his favorite), explaining that he had missed Chinese food when fighting at the championships in Chicago, and hence vice-versa in Beijing. "Plus Chinese food can be very greasy, and I have to control weight." No one quite got that remark but everyone including him laughed. Zou, who had to settle for the bronze in Athens, also took some credit for Purevdorj's early exit. In Round One, he sprayed the Kazakh with upper cuts. Zou said his coach sensed Purevdorj's shoulder was vulnerable and advised him to go for a "pre-emptive" strike. "Maybe it looked easy, but in fact there was a lot of preparation behind it." The same could be said for many of China's Olympic champs.
