BEIJING – Chalk it up to good, old Yangtze ingenuity. To technical precision and limitless manpower.
Mark it down as the most spectacular Opening Ceremonies ever staged at the most ambitious Olympic Games ever conceived.
Then brace yourself for a new world order in which China leads the way in sports as it does in socialism and sweatshops.
“I know the resources and what they intend to do,” said Peter Ueberroth, chairman of the United States Olympic Committee. “And I clearly expect them to be the dominant team in the Olympic Games for many, many years to come.”
The conclusion is inescapable and the hour is nigh. Twenty-four years since it finally embarked on the course of Olympic competition, the world's most populous nation has mobilized its athletes on a massive scale, endowed them with fabulous facilities and invited the world to bear witness to its exploding excellence.
China collected 32 medals in its Olympic debut in Los Angeles in 1984. Four years ago, in Athens, the Chinese earned 32 gold medals. This year, for the first time, the Chinese are expected to surpass the United States in gold medals or total medals and possibly in both.
The Soviet Union has splintered, but the competition for global sports supremacy has intensified. Following a poor showing in the 2000 Sydney Games in such core sports as track and field and swimming, China's State General Sports Bureau launched “Project 119” as a means of chasing medals in weaker events.
Now, China has strong medal threats in boxing and mountain biking as well as traditional strengths such as diving, gymnastics and table tennis.
“We certainly believe this is a system that will be very long-lived. This is not a one-time-shot opportunity for the Beijing Games,” said Jim Scherr, the USOC's chief executive officer. “The sports infrastructure, the sports facilities, the coaches that are being developed here, and the young people that will be inspired by these Games, we think that this will be a formidable system that we will have to contend with for a very, very long time.”
Yesterday's Opening Ceremonies for the 29th Summer Games will have no bearing on the medal count, yet it spoke to the size of China's athletic ambitions and the depth of its determination. It represented the fruition of years of intense and intricate rehearsal for a cast of (15) thousands, culminating in a spectacular solo lap around the stadium by airborne gymnast Li Ning.
Li, who earned six medals at the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles, lit the Olympic caldron while suspended hundreds of feet above the floor of the National Stadium known, appropriately enough, as the Bird's Nest.
“The biggest problem is the wind,” Li explained. “In the past month, we have trained several times and every time I must balance myself in the air and hold the torch close to the caldron gas outlet. But every time the wind blew in a different direction.”
Changing winds could prove to be a metaphor for the Beijing Games, or a dashed dream. China's willingness to play host to the world's most conspicuous sporting event is widely seen as an indication of openness by a society that has long kept foreigners at Yao Ming-arm's length. Yet social and political progress have not kept pace with China's strides on the playing fields, and these Games have been clouded by the country's heavy-handed policies in Darfur and Tibet as well as by Beijing's palpable pollution.
American activist Joey Cheek, a gold medal speed skater, had his visa revoked this week by officials presumably concerned that Cheek's presence would spawn protests and criticism of China's laissez-faire attitude toward the violence in Darfur. The selection of Sudanese immigrant Lopez Lomong to carry the American flag in the Opening Ceremonies could easily be read as a repudiation of China.
Ueberroth called Lomong's selection “a wonderful statement” though he stopped short of interpreting it as a message about human rights.
“Either way, it's fine,” Ueberroth said. “Either way, it's good.”
Those prone to platitudes – and there's no shortage of them in the so-called Olympic “movement” – see China's competitive surge as a sign that a self-contained culture is more willing to engage its neighbors; more open to change.
Another way of looking at it is that a sleeping dragon has been roused, and has decided to flex some muscles; that the Opening Ceremonies were as much a show of force as a welcome to the world.
“It shows the dream of Chinese sportsmen for generations,” Li Ning said, “and also the common aspirations of 1.3 billion Chinese people.”
Loosely translated, to kick butt.
Tim Sullivan: (619) 293-1033; tim.sullivan@uniontrib.com
