OLYMPICS China working to be power at 2008 Games

The country will host the next Olympics and doesn't want to finish second.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) -- When he was an Olympic wrestler, Jim Scherr never had any trouble identifying America's top competition. All he had to do was look at the black and white posters in the training hall that stated, simply: "The Russians are coming."
A lot has changed in the quarter century since, but for the first time since the Cold War, the U.S. Olympic team has found a rival again.
It's China, the land of 1.3 billion people, host of the next Olympics, and a country that doesn't want to finish second on its home turf in 2008 -- not even to the powerhouse that has dominated the Summer Games since the Soviet Union fell.
"It's certainly the most significant challenge we've faced in a very long time as an Olympic movement in the United States," said Scherr, now the chief executive of the U.S. Olympic Committee.
To drive home the gravity of the challenge, the USOC will take a delegation of coaches and team leaders to China next week to get a lay of the land. Twenty-eight months before the games, this marks the earliest in an Olympic cycle the USOC has led such a large group to the host country.
While much of the trip will be devoted to logistics -- the formidable task of making athletes feel comfortable and getting them from place to place in a country halfway around the world -- there will be a few side trips to some Chinese training facilities.
USOC chief impressed
Steve Roush, the USOC's chief of sport performance, has already seen several of those facilities on earlier trips. What he saw was daunting -- huge numbers of kids practicing in all sports imaginable.
"I know a lot of people are worried about their targeting for 2008," Roush said. "Honestly, probably more of a concern in my mind is that they're creating a network and system that will have sustainability for decades."
At aquatics centers in Beijing, Roush saw hundreds of 9- and 10-year olds, all performing the same difficult dives, repeating them like clockwork.
He saw gymnasiums full of badminton courts and players waiting in line to get their chance to play. "If you hit the shuttle 10,000 times more, then you will be better," Swedish badminton coach Jens Olsson said in 2004 after the Chinese won five medals. "We simply can't get 9- and 10-year olds to practice twice a day."
Roush saw other gyms filled with more than 100 pingpong tables, with 12-year-olds playing and a coach for every two tables -- "probably exceeding what we have in our country in that gymnasium," he said.
While it's one thing for China to focus on its strong sports, it's quite another to improve others in which it has struggled for years.
Brought in new coaches
China has always had numbers, but the thing Roush noticed most was the change in the coaching structure. Over the last six years, the Chinese have gone overseas to America, Canada and Europe to find coaches to teach their athletes technique.
Del Harris coached the basketball team in 2004. Romanian gymnastics coach Octavian Belu is considering working for China in 2008. Even in winter sports, it's making a difference. China brought freestyle skiing coach Dustin Wilson from Canada and the Chinese won two out of six medals in aerials in Turin -- a number that looked like it would be higher after three Chinese women qualified for the top three spots in finals.
"They're going out and cherry picking some of the very best coaches in disciplines they've traditionally struggled in," Roush said. "They're not only developing athletes, but developing a coaching system based on outside influence."
Take the world's best coaches, throw them into a country with more than 1 billion people and implement some of the philosophies that helped turn the Eastern bloc into a powerhouse during the Cold War -- politics aside, it's true that young athletes can be cloistered and trained more efficiently in a totalitarian society -- and the results should be predictable.
Already on the upclimb
China is already showing some signs of getting better. The country that has steadily climbed from 50 Olympic medals in 1996 to 63 in 2004 -- but has never finished higher than third on the medals table -- is becoming more well rounded and competitive.
The USOC tracks top-3 and top-8 finishes from world championship events every year. In 2005, the Chinese won 70 medals and had 148 top-8 finishes. In 2001, the comparable year in the last Olympic cycle, it was 62 medals and 110 top-8s.
"They have a very defined strategy for success at these games," Scherr said.
"They'll focus on sports where they've traditionally been strong, then they'll look to pick up opportunities in sports where they can, and maybe take a few medals from us in track and field and swimming. If you look at it, it's a very cost-effective, smart strategy."