Word: train
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...during her childhood. Most of all, Jo worries about losing sight of Renee amid all her own concerns surrounding her daughter's weight. "I feel like she's experiencing my weight issues all over again, living my obsession with food," Jo says. "I feel like I'm watching a train wreck, and I can't do anything about...
...rival Taiwan's participation. When China finally rejoined the Games in 1980, the sports-school system was expanded to ensure that Chinese athletes would do their country proud. For many parents, securing three bowls of rice a day for their offspring was enough to convince them that the grueling training was worth it. But by the '90s, with the economy opening up, fewer families were willing, say, to send their daughters to train as weight lifters when they could study computer science instead. After all, for every Olympic champion the sports academies produce, hundreds of thousands of other children fail...
This single-minded drive explains why China has full-time academies dedicated to what most countries consider a rec-room pastime. At the Luneng Table-Tennis School in Shandong province, 230 boarding students crowd a gymnasium set up with 80 Ping-Pong tables. In the morning, children train for about four hours. A few hours of academic classes are held in the afternoon, more than at many other sports schools. Three times a week, students hone their table-tennis skills also in the evening. Many kids see their parents for only a couple of weeks each year. "China...
...propaganda director assures us that the kids practice for only a couple of hours a day. But students I speak to without a minder present say they train for at least five hours. None of the dorm rooms I visit have any textbooks--strange for a school that the propaganda director tells me is "mostly for academics, with sports training just as a spare-time activity." Wang Ting, a 15-year-old runner, looks at me blankly when I ask what she does during her time off. "I run, and I sleep," she replies. "That...
...train-till-you-drop mentality derives, in part, from a physical-inferiority complex that's taken as fact in Chinese sports circles. "Chinese bodies are not as naturally strong as those of people from other countries," says Qingdao school principal Qiao, repeating what I am told by Sports Ministry officials. "But we can work harder than anyone else. That's our biggest advantage." Chinese women, in particular, are renowned for their ability to withstand brutal training. Unlike in the U.S., where the privatization of athletics means less money for women's sports--just compare the NBA with the WNBA...