China's first Olympic champion Xu Haifeng believes his country's pursuit of gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Games could be hampered by the pressure of being host.

Xu's nerveless display in the final of the 50-metre pistol shooting in Los Angeles in 1984 won China its first Olympic gold medal on its return to the Summer Games after an absence of 32 years.

"These games might be affected by the home pressure in Beijing," the 48-year-old Xu said yesterday.

"In the disciplines where mental or psychological factors are important, there may be more negative effects than positive.

"In shooting, for example we did some research which showed that the hosts had no advantage compared to the previous Olympics.

"Moreover, technical sports in which China are strong, such as diving and table tennis, require athletes to remain calm. That may become harder at home," Xu insisted.

"However, in physical sports like running, swimming, and boxing, the athletes might be boosted by the support of the home crowd and do better."

China finished second in the medals table behind the United States with 32 golds at the Athens Games in 2004.

Xu thinks China is unlikely to improve greatly on that in 2008 and overtake the Americans.

"It would be very difficult," he said.

"China has already won pretty much all the golds it can get in sports like shooting, diving, table tennis, badminton, gymnastics, women's weight-lifting. We're at saturation point.

"As for the hundreds of golds of the athletics, swimming, sailing, cycling, we're likely to win only few of them."

Xu, who also won a shooting bronze in Seoul in 1988, said China's obsession with winning gold medals, rather than focusing on participation, was inevitable.

"China is now in a certain phase of social development so attach more importance to winning, I'm sure western countries also had similar stages of development," he said.

"And obviously every athlete always wants to win.

"For a host country of a Games, the significance becomes even greater. So, for example, Germany will be very disappointed to have lost last night's World Cup semifinal."

After retiring from competition in 1994, Xu coached two shooters to Olympic gold before a disappointing display by his charges at Athens saw him moved to take over China's modern pentathlon team.

Despite having only 95 athletes involved in the multi-discipline event in a country of 1.3 billion people, Xu thinks his team could contribute to China's medal tally in Beijing.
 
(Shanghai Daily July 6, 2006)