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China's table-tennis success inspired the country's sports officials to apply the same model to medal-rich Olympic disciplines. In addition to diving, in which the Chinese won six of an available eight gold medals in Athens, the country is now a powerhouse in weight-lifting and shooting, neither of which was a popular event before the sports bureaucrats got involved. China's first Taekwondo national team was formed in 1995, when officials noticed that few athletes outside of South Korea competed in the martial art. Five years later, in Sydney, China won an Olympic gold...
...sports--just compare the NBA with the WNBA--the Chinese state lavishes funds on its female athletes from childhood onward. Mao used to say, "Women hold up half the sky." In fact, four years ago in Athens, Chinese women did even better, winning 60% of the country's gold medals...
...thing the Chinese government wants is a doping scandal on home soil. About $20 billion is being spent on Olympics-related preparations. But even though seven years of Olympics priming has only heightened Chinese hopes for domination, sports officials in recent weeks have scaled back expectations of a record gold-medal harvest. In March, the deputy head of the Sports Ministry cautioned that China didn't expect to surpass the U.S. The modesty may have been tactical. For Athens, Chinese sports officials put their target at just 20 gold medals. In fact, China won 32. Nearly 60% of China...
...brightest of these stars is Liu Xiang, a 110-m hurdler whose world-record-breaking sprints disprove the notion that Chinese bodies are somehow inferior to foreign ones in high-piston sporting events. (After winning a gold in Athens, Liu said his "victory has proved that athletes with yellow skin can run as fast as those with black and white skin.") When I met Liu shortly before Athens, I was struck by his individualism; unlike many Chinese Olympians who didn't choose their sporting careers, Liu actually liked hurdling. Although he did mumble some variation of the patriotic theme...
...activities"--a catchall for anything from commercial shoots to the occasional night of karaoke--to get in the way of his training. The pressure to win is almost unimaginable: a recent Internet survey found that the Chinese public's No. 1 Olympics wish was for Liu, 24, to strike gold. Four years ago, Liu surprised me with his rebel streak. "The thing about rules is that they are made by people," he said, "and they can be broken by people too." But with so much riding on the Olympics, China's government will do all it can to ensure that...