The strain on Chinese athletes is so nice that some take into account it a failure to win a silver or bronze medal on the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Regardless of the values of Olympism, the emotional photographs that exalt the human situation by means of the display screen, the solidarity between athletes and the faces of triumph and enchancment that transfer anybody, on occasion come to gentle. the darker aspect of the Olympics.
And it’s that aside from the official transmission of competitions and awards, the dream of attending the world’s best sports activities truthful can develop into a nightmare when the atmosphere is hostile and makes the most demand, excessive strain and hyper-competitiveness an obligation.
Picture: CHINASPORTS / VCG through .
If to the above is added a nationalist cost To attain perfection for the sake of displaying the supremacy and achievements of a rustic, the result’s the antithesis of the values of sport and Olympism.
Such is the case of some athletes who take part within the Chinese delegation in Tokyo 2020, made up of 431 athletes from the totally different disciplines of those Olympic Video games, for whom winning a second or third place is synonymous with failure, based on the requirements of Chinese society.
Two circumstances that signify completely have been recovered intimately by the BBC: that of Li Junhui and Liu Yuchen (a pair that misplaced the boys’s doubles badminton closing to Taiwan) and that of the duo fashioned by Liu Shiwen and Xu Xin, who raced the identical destiny towards Japan within the final occasion of combined desk tennis.
As a substitute of the athletes being a supply of delight for his or her nation, each {couples} obtained acid criticism on Weibo, one of the crucial used social networks in China, which later escalated into violent disqualifications, which branded their efficiency as embarrassing and even unpatriotic.
The strain escalated to such a level that Liu Shiwen and Xu Xin made public apologies after their defeat within the closing, which earned them a silver medal, stating that it was a unacceptable consequence for the Chinese delegation.
His case has been replicated on a smaller scale for dozens of Chinese athletes, who’re crushed by an ever-widening sector of critics on social media which have in frequent an ideology in step with that of the regime that governs China.
And even though China tops the medal desk due to the truth that it has extra golds than every other nation – and its probabilities of ending the Olympics in first place are broad – the nationalism promoted inside the nation and the formidable applications for minors Getting into strenuous coaching from the age of 5 (often called champion factories) locations a burden on athletes that’s generally unattainable to beat.
Picture: Fu Tian / China Information Service through .
The official ideology promoted by the Communist Occasion (which claims achievements such because the accelerated development of the economic system and its house program) exposes Chinese athletes for propaganda functions, turning a sporting occasion right into a frantic race for present the world a supposed superiority, within the purest type of the Chilly Conflict.
Regardless of the Tokyo 2020 medal desk might be conquered for the second time in historical past by China (the primary occurred in Beijing 2008), no steel is sufficient when competing and winning develop into a patriotic obligation.
Now learn:
Bare athletes, Amazon warriors and numerous wine: this was the Olympic Video games in Antiquity
The reality concerning the anti-sex beds of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics
Add Comment