Home > How They See Us > Archives > 2008 > June > 27
Friday, June 27, 2008
Who said anything about gold medals?
China is investing a record amount to host this summer’s Olympic Games, but its leaders don’t expect to displace the United States atop the medal tally, a top Chinese official said.
Despite maintaining a massive system of state-run schools that find and train the nation’s top athletes and dramatically boosting funding for the national team over recent years, “it is unrealistic to expect China to earn more gold medals than the US,” said Cui Dalin, a deputy director of China’s State General Administration of Sport, the Beijing Today newspaper reported on Friday.
Many experts, however, think Chinese officials are simply trying to downplay expectations. A report released last Monday by the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers predicted that China will top the United States in the medal count by a tally of 88 to 87.
“As the host nation in Beijing and (with) an economy which has grown very strongly since 2004,” China is likely to win 88 medals at the Games, said John Hawksworth, the report’s author, the Associated Press reported.
“David can sometimes slay Goliath in the Olympic arena,” he said.
China won 63 medals during the Athens’ Games, finishing behind the United States’ 102 medals and Russia’s 92. China won 32 gold medals in Athens, second behind the the United States’ 35.
Many experts believe China has adopted a gold-or-bust strategy where athletes - often driven to excel by monetary rewards - are put through grueling training that stress perfection.
Beijing may be trying to keep medal expectations low to avoid possible embarrassment. But Cui predicted that China’s athletes would have advantages in taekwondo, diving, ping pong, shooting and weightlifting.
“Chinese athletes have made breakthroughs in some sports, such as boxing, rowing, sailing, fencing, men’s wrestling, the pentathlon and trampoline, but the results are less certain,” Beijing Today reported.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
Neocons accused of undermining Europe
Europeans tend to blame Americans for everything: childhood obesity, financial turmoil, mindless television entertainment. Now Europeans are even blaming Americans — well, just neocon Americans — for Ireland’s recent rejection of the Lisbon Treaty, designed to make Europe stronger by streamlining the European Union’s balky bureaucracy.
The words were clear: “Europe has powerful enemies on the other side of the Atlantic, gifted with considerable financial means.” The speaker was France’s Europe Minister Jean-Pierre Jouyet, addressing a pro-European rally in Lyon, France last weekend.
According to Germany’s Der Spiegel newspaper, he was putting the blame for the Irish rejection of the Lisbon Treaty on some surprising shoulders: neoconservatives in the United States. “The role of the American neocons was very important in the victory of the ‘no,’ ” Jouyet said.
The newspaper said it has been alleged that U.S. funding helped support one of the most powerful groups campaigning against the treaty, Libertas. Libertas has said that its main gripe with the Lisbon Treaty is that it was anti-democratic and could undermine Irish business interests.
So why would American neocons want a rejection of the Lisbon Treaty? It’s not really clear from the article. But it does point out that John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said that the treaty would “undercut NATO,” something that would be a huge mistake.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
Wanted: Best Movie of the Summer
What’s the best movie of the summer according to at least some British critics? “Wanted,” starring Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy. “It is an in-yer-face blockbuster like nothing else this summer, and it’s going to be enormous,” said London’s Telegraph newspaper today. But the review said it’s not Angelina who keeps the film engaging but the Scottish actor McAvoy, “who throws himself into this supreme trash with the conviction of a brand-new Everyman action hero - shorter than usual, freaked out, and constantly apologizing.” The review said that the overall story — while entirely daft — is utterly entertaining.
The reviewer also liked “Hancock,” which stars Will Smith as a slovenly superhero with anger management issues. “For everything that doesn’t work in ‘Hancock,’ there’s a sort of structural anarchy going that’s refreshing - it rebels against even the adolescent formulae of rebellion to give us something more adult. It also has one quality that your average superhero flick never does: You haven’t the faintest clue where it’s going.”
