Official promotion prospects drive medal mania at National Games
- By Mark Dreyer
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E-mail China.org.cn, September 26, 2013
Similarly, Mengke Bateer is one of Inner Mongolia's most famous sporting sons - sporting or otherwise. But the first Chinese basketball player to win an NBA Championship is the ultimate homer, representing represented host province Shandong Province in 2009 as well as host provinceand Liaoning Province in 2013. How do Inner Mongolians feel when they see him representing another province instead of their own? What do those in Shandong or Liaoning think when they know that they have sporting mercenaries instead of locals representing them?
Athletes switch allegiances because officials from certain provinces are willing to pay to improve their team: the more medals they win, the higher their chances of promotion. The National Games were created in 1959 specifically to increase public participation in sports, and this should be the goal of local sports officials today, but that ideal gets lost in the race for attention, and nothing gets the attention quite like medals.
The athletes, of course, get compensated together with the province that trades them, but there are cases where a switch is not motivated purely by money. Huang Xuechen, for example, is a synchronized swimmer from Shanghai but represented Liaoning partly becausedue in part to a feeling that the host province tends to fare better in events where marks are awarded by judges, whose scores can be influenced by the surroundings. It turned out to be a wise decision: teaming up to perform a duet with Wu Yiwen, Huang won the gold medal - ahead of the Jiang twins from Sichuan, whose routine was exactly the same that won a World Championship silver medal just a few weeks earlier.
It can get expensive for the host province to import athletes from a range of disciplines: some divers from Yunnan province were reportedly traded to Liaoning for a sum of 200,000 RMB per diver per year, and athletes such as Mengke Bateer would likely go for far more. But the host province typically has a larger budget for these types of provisions, even in times of austerity.
For some athletes, switching allegiances is about recognition. With certain smaller sports, the Olympic spotlight only comes around once every four years, and so the National Games gives Chinese athletes another chance to shine. But with training facilities and support so essential to the modern-day competitor, the temptation to jump ship to a team that has more financial backing could mean the difference between winning a medal or not. Medals are then converted into financial rewards, and with countless stories about former world and Olympic champions ending up penniless just a few years after retiring from their sport, it's hard to begrudge an athlete cashing in during an extremely short window of opportunity.
Experts have been bemoaning this the so-called medal mania at the National Games for years, but it shows no signs of abating. This year, In fact, it may be getting worse. In a move as bizarre as FIFA awarding the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, Chinese officials dreamt up an incredible system for this year's National Games in which considerably more medals were won than before.
Olympic titles and world records from as far back as 2010 were converted into gold medals that were then counted in the official 2013 National Games medal table; medals from the 2012 National Winter Games also counted; and in the three sports of soccer, basketball and volleyball, the overall winners won three golds each and medals were awarded all the way down to ninth place. As a result, Heilongjiang province had accrued 43 medals before the Opening Ceremony had begun, and swimmer Sun Yang won 10 golds and one bronze for Zhejiang despite only swimming in six races in Shenyang.
If medals are the currency by which officials are judged, then this move only serves to devalue the currency. Positive steps were taken this year to slash the event's initial budget to save unnecessary costs, but until the National Games are made to revert to their original purpose of promoting sports among the public, the egos of regional officials will win out over all else.
Mark Dreyer has 15 years experience in sports journalism and worked for Sky Sports, Fox Sports and AP Sports. He has covered the last three Olympic Games and has been based in China since 2007. He can be contacted at dreyermark@gmail.com
Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
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