2020/2021 Tokyo Summer Olympics

Sardaukar20 said:

There you have it. The first shots fired from non-other than: SCMP!

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...

Xsizor said:

Be glad with what one has got. Be careful not to dwell on the losses.

That's the motto. There are countries which see 1 Gold medal as a big deal ( even with a 1.4 Billion population). China's path has been remarkable.


China must focus on reducing "near misses and mistakes". Doing this can result in an extra 3 or 5 medals atleast. Sustained funding and support is needed in medal guaranteed events. China must focus on Golf, equistrian, judo etc.

50+ gold medals is possible.

Click to expand...

siegecrossbow said:

Mistakes are unavoidable. If China won additional medals in table tennis or badminton then it is also possible to lose medals in events like cycling, in which China got first by the skin of their teeth.

Click to expand...

Sardaukar20 said:

Well, I don't think there is a big problem with China missing out on Gold medals. Sports is like that, you don't win all the time. My biggest gripe is with the SCMP, and the Western-led MSM getting all excited to insult China for this. Every time the USA is beaten by someone else, they use words like 'beaten', or 'pipped'. But if China is beaten, then they must use words like: 'out-classed', 'humiliated', or 'trashed'. They make it sound like the defeated Chinese athletes will go home humiliated and ridiculed.

If China-haters must highlight China's failures in the Olympics, then its also fair to highlight the US's failures in their traditionally dominant sports: track and field. Like in this story:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

The big story should have been this: China fielded only 406 athletes vs USA's 615 athletes. USA has got 209 extra athletes and only managed an extra 1 gold medal vs China, and 25 extra medals overall vs China. If anything, China kinda overachieved with 209 athletes less than the USA. I won't go into the technicalities of including Greater China, because that opens up a very different discussion.

Hence, there is little for China to be sad about. In fact, China and its fans should be proud. China managed to achieve so much with 209-less athletes than the USA. China can still improve further from this. Its the Western-led MSM that wants to make people think that China is being humiliated by the USA. That reveals their insecurity, because its the USA who should be worried. With their vast numerical advantage in athletes, China gave the USA a good scare until only the last days of the Olympics. If the USA is being objective, then their 2020 Tokyo Olympics performance leaves much to be desired.

Click to expand...

Lethe said:

Congratulations to both China and Australia on a very successful Olympics and to India for their most successful Olympics yet. It is unfortunate that some posters here ar

Click to expand...

weig2000 said:

I'm very impressed by the performance of Hong Kong team and Chinese Taipei team. Kind of unexpected.

Click to expand...

Kaeshmiri said:

Football requires a comprehensive grassroot program and a local football culture for it to develop. The absence of the latter is the reason Asia never became a football powerhouse despite the massive population.
The only 2 World Class players Asia ever produced were both South Korean, Park Ji Sung and Son.

Click to expand...

getready said:

Good points on football. And I think a strong domestic league will also help. Talent spotting and development also factors.

I will argue though both the Korean players can't even be considered world class. Son maybe just borderline. Park is just a good industrious utility player. Of course it depends on how we define world class. There are alot of variations out there but I feel in the strictest sense of the term, both are below the bracket of players considered the very elite in the world.

Click to expand...

manqiangrexue said:

Current Situation: Not too great for China to stay on top.
OK so China has 38 golds to America's 36. Really, America has 37 because it would be beyond an act of God for the US to lose to Japan in basketball. The US bus could crash and all of them could run the rest of the way bleeding with concussions and still beat Japan like they were playing a mild warm up. Without that, there is only a 1 gold medal difference and the US has women's volleyball vs Brazil (50/50 chance), and 2 boxing matches (1 against an Uzbek who KO'd this same American opponent the last time they fought) and 1 against a Cuban. China has 1 boxing match but I have no hopes for it. We'll just say that the US needs to choke on all 3 for China to win and if they get one, they will tie and win by silver count.

Combat Sports: Room for cheap and fast improvement.
One incredibly frustrating thing I noticed is the poor performance of Chinese combat sports. Whether it be Taekwondo, wrestling, boxing, karate, etc... we have lost every single final without fail. And it is NOT because of lack of skill. They virtually all lost on one common mistake: lack of aggression. In a fight, you always want to put forward pressure on your opponent to overload his training, force him to drop offense and go into defense, then break down his defense. This is all done by overwhelming offense; nobody can ever win by defense because the best outcome for defense is 0-0. Chinese "fighters" are 90% defense, 10% offense; they are trained under the philsophy to firstly ensure one's own protection and securing that, think of ways to eek out points. When they fight, I can tell they are afraid to make moves because they fear that the wrong move will get them scored on causing them to lose a gold medal and in the end, they lose that medal because the opponent's aggression broke down their defense, or even when the defense held up to a 0-0, the judges decided a Chinese defeat due to lack of offense. And when they are in the lead, they dig further into defense because they just want to hold on and have the time run out, causing their opponents to have the oppertunity to go on the offense for points. This is what happened to the Chinese 53kg wrestler who lost to Japan blowing a 4-0 early lead. In London, I remember a Chinese Taekwondo male heavyweight lost his bout on penalty because the fucker was ahead on points with a few second left and literally turned around and ran out of bounds hoping to win by clock. That is exactly the wrong mentality to get into a fight with, and it is supposed to be a fight but they forgot. This is simulated combat by points but the Chinese treat this like it's a touch point game. Two mental points that make a person a good fighter are aggression and fearlessness. Mike Tyson once said, "If I don't kill you, it don't count." That's aggression. As long as your opponent is standing, no matter what the points are, no matter what the clock says, you should be attacking and laying on costant pressure. 'This person has wronged me; this is my chance to hurt him for it.' That's what a fighter should be thinking during the entire match. The second point is fearlessness. A Korean saying in Taekwondo goes, "If you want to kill a tiger, you must expect to be bitten." When a person enters a fight thinking that the primary goal is to avoid being hit, he will end up doing no damage against his opponent, but slowly taking more and more damage with each small defensive mistake until he has taken all of the damage and his opponent has none. A person must enter the fight with the mentality that the primary goal is to unload as much damage as possible onto the opponent with preventing shots on oneself being a bonus. In that way, he may take damage faster than if he had been on full defense, but he stands a chance of destroying his opponent completely and winning, hence stopping more damage to himself in the long run. He may also completely overwhelm his opponent into defense and win without damage. The best defense is a good offense. Take-away point: Self-defense is a misnomer; attack, attack, attack. At the end of a good match, your opponent shouldn't even be thinking about points or medals; he should just be relieved that he survived the beating... if he's still conscious. I don't know how I can get this through to the Chinese coaches but I don't have hopes for the boxing final tomorrow.

Further Improvement: Can be done but maybe should not be done.
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.

Click to expand...