That was an immediate and cost-free way for China to improve. We had lost every final combat bout out of several; had we taken just 2, the gold medal count would be pretty much out of reach for the Americans. But there are other ways to improve that I'm not so sure should be undertaken. Or rather, I think should not be undertaken. Swimming medals are very possible for China to emphasize and unlike some athletics events, we are given constant reminder that Chinese genetics are indeed built to swim competitively. However, swimming is a rich people sport and it would require drawing talent from middle class urban families. This is both difficult to do and possibly should not be done. In order to do this, the culture towards sports in China has to change. Culturally, Chinese people pity those who earn a living with their body as opposed to with their mind. The general consensus in China is to focus as much on academics as possible while exercising just enough to remain healthy... which is important if you want to pull long study hours. So there are 2 problems right there for Olympic glory: 1, in order to draw city talent, you need to create a culture of life balance rather than with nearly all emphasis on academics so that kids can play sports enough to be recognized as an early talent to even think about recruiting. This takes time from his studies. If a kid swims once a month, his talent will simply not be visible to recruiters. 2. You need to remove the stigma that it is a shame to earn a living with your body. When I was a child, I once remarked how cool it was to be a UFC fighter and win matches and my father responded that he pities those people who allow thier own bodies to be injured and destroyed for other's amusement. My girlfriend just yesterday told me that if a talent recruiter came to tell her that her child shows incredible athletic promise and he would like to recruit him, her answer would be, "No, no, hell no, fuck no. If you ever come back, I'll set you on fire in broad daylight and just accept the legal consequences. Stay away from my child!" She says that an Olympic gold medalist in China works his entire young life away for a 1% chance at 2 minutes of fame. You need to be Liu Xiang or Guo Jingjing to really make any money. If not, you'll most likely end up gifted a moderate apartment and hold a medium income job as a coach. She says why would you want that? She can almost guarantee much better than that if she just studies. And athletes only get that if they make it to the 1% of gold medalists and succeed. If not, there is a high chance that they will end up in a low-key type of poverty. So as you see, in order to change the culture so that more inner city youths are recruited as swimming talents, the focus would have to be made more on personal balance rather on academic elitism. And the problem with that is that the Olympic games are, as the title denotes, just games. The real competition is in technology. By taking emphasis away from academics, it can cause China's tech drive to bleed some energy and that's not worth it, therefore I don't think this second measure should be taken. However, I think that with time, this will happen eventually. China is fervently trying to make up as much ground as possible to overtake the US. Once this is done and the US is behind, China's massive population can maintain the lead on cruise control, and then, the culture will naturally drift away from academic perfection at all costs and towards life balance, which includes sports and pursuit of physical excellence.
