Travel

Inside the grueling Chinese 'sports schools' where kids become Olympians

Chris Weller

2016-08-01T14:37:00Z

The first time Susan Brownell walked into the gymnastics gym at Shanghai Yangpu Youth Amateur Athletic School, in Beijing, China, she had to fight the urge to wince.

"You've got tiny little kids, who are basically in diapers, and it's amazing what they can do at that age," Brownell, an anthropologist from the University of Missouri-St. Louis, tells Tech Insider. "They get bent up like pretzels when they do flexibility exercises."

Shichahai is just one of thousands of intense sports-centered boarding schools around China. With sizable funding from the federal government, kids as young as 6 who show early talents in sports like taekwando, table tennis, gymnastics, and badminton train for years in the hopes of bringing money and honor back to their families.

For most, the dream dies early. But for some, it's the first step on the path toward Olympic greatness.

Beginning with its Ping Pong diplomacy of the 1970s, in which an exchange of table tennis players between the US and China thawed Cold War tensions, the country has used sports to achieve honor.

When Beijing was selected for the 2008 Games, it launched Project 119 — an initiative to nab the 119 gold medals in events that China had trouble with in 2000.

That dream of Olympic domination still lives on in the sports schools scattered across China, where kids prepare for the 2020 Games and beyond.

Many students come from disadvantaged families who see sports as their ticket out of poverty. Brownell says winning early Olympic trials earns athletes and their families a chance at city living and the status that comes with it.

"Parents that were college-educated don't tend to support their children getting tracked into sports, because in these sports boarding schools the education is not very good," she says.

The biggest focus, of course, is the training.

Early on in public school, kids are divided into five categories depending on their talent: international master sportsman, national master sportsman, Grade 1, Grade 2, and Grade 3. Only kids at Grade 1 or higher generally make it to sports boarding schools.

For decades, there used to be "spare-time sports schools," which trained kids at the Grade 2 and 3 levels. But the government has since stopped funding those to direct more attention to its elite-level athletes.

According to 2013 data (the latest year for which data are available), of the 51,000 athletes who made it to the national or provincial teams, roughly 11,000 were at master sportsman or Grade 1 — the ones who go on to compete for spots on the Olympic roster.

Source: National Statistics Bureau of China

In 2013, the State General Administration of Sport, China's primary athletic agency, spent nearly $600 million on sports and training.

Source: National Statistics Bureau of China

"China's economic development prompts our sports development," gymnastics coach Zhao Genbo told CBS News in 2012, at the start of the London Games. "Our coaches and athletes go through great pains and hardship for glory."

Source: CBS News

Shichahai and countless schools just like it feature state-of-the-art training facilities for kids to hone their talents.

But the quest for Olympic fame consumes their lives, often turning a sport they love into a monotonous routine, Brownell says.

"They basically eat, train, and are supposed to go to class, but don't always," she says. "The vast majority of them are doing it for pragmatic reasons, which is to get a better life for themselves and their family."

The kids training at Shichahai and neighboring sports schools ahead of the Rio Olympics no doubt have their sights set on gold.

But for the others — the ones who give it their all and still fall short — over a decade of training may leave them unprepared in the real world, Brownell says.

"The vast majority of these athletes are not going to becoming Olympic medalists," she says. But even if the kids do fall through the cracks, that's just the system at work. "That's what it was designed to do: produce medals."

So far, that system has been relatively successful. At the London Olympics, China took home 87 medals, trailing the overall medal leader, the United States, by 17 medals.

Source: SB Nation

Perhaps 2016 will be the year that China's athletic domination at home can translate to a victory on the world's stage.

China