Word: weighted
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...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. Most of these kids miss out on the education provided in regular schools. The China Sports Daily estimates that about 80% of the country...
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...
...most other Chinese sports schools, suffering is considered integral to the athletic experience. At the Weifang City Sports School, where little Cloud is being trained to be a weight lifter, most of the kids are so chronically exhausted that during their afternoon break, they collapse in eight-to-a-room iron bunks to sleep. The Weifang academy is a collection of moldy concrete buildings, with only red socialist banners to break the monotone grays. LEARN FROM OUR COMRADES AND CREATE A NEW AND GLORIOUS OLYMPICS, urges a slogan in the weight-lifting gym. Taped to a wall nearby are rows...
High cholesterol. Soaring blood pressure. A fatty liver. Dangerously elevated insulin levels. Even a first-year medical student could recognize the signs of a middle-aged patient struggling with weight problems and diabetes and probably heading for a heart attack...
...risk of not only better-known ills like cardiac disease but also arthritis, joint damage and sleep apnea. Adults who were overweight as children have nearly twice the risk of dying from any cause in their 70s than are adults who were of normal weight as youngsters. Early evidence also suggests that heavier children are even 35% more likely to develop cancer in their later years. "If you are a fat kid, you know you're in trouble," says Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatrician at the University of California, San Francisco, "and you know you need to do something about...