You can't have a good football team when not many Chinese play football to begin with. I believe the numbers of professional football players have dropped to a few thousands just a few years ago before recovery to tens of thousands recently compare with hundreds of thousands in other countries.
2020/2021 Tokyo Summer Olympics
- Thread starter Strangelove
- Start date
France had NBA players and also does the state sponsorship model. Indeed so does UK (through UK Sport) and Australia.
Only the US does not have a direct government sports sponsorship model.
It doesn't matter what China does. Men basketball and volleyball skewed too much towards right talents that China is unlikely to have. Beside, NBA is only popular in the US and China. Compare with FIFA, NBA doesn't have the same influence and appeal to the world audience. I would think focusing upon Women basketball, football, and volleyball is more productive. For men team sports, football should be prioritized. Basketball should maintain being the best team in Asia. Men Volleyball should not be bothered.
I agree with this.
In summary of the games, I think it's more or less within expectations. China performed strongly in areas they are expected to perform well in traditionally. Diving weightlifting table tennis etc. Gymnastics maybe some will consider as underperformed but since 2008 china has been on steady decline, more so for the women than men. So results are not unexpected although china still had 3 gold and a few silvers. Shooting we also did well imo.
These games afaik we didn't have a truly breakthrough surprise in gold medal like we did in athens with liu xiang. Su's achievement is truly amazing but he didn't medal if we really reduced it to tangible terms. I was looking forward to Zheng Nina who competed in heptathlon but I guess the tokyo games is too soon for her. Paris will be where she reaches her peak years. Still she was the only Asian in the final, it's very encouraging to see.
The weakness in team events is still very evident here. Women's volleyball, possibly our lone medal hope in team event, bombed due to injury and bad form.
In the future, I think people are concentrated on track and field plus swimming as they have alot of medals on offer and they are considered the main draw of the Olympics. As they should. But we should not also forget disciplines like cycling, rowing and the new sports introduced in Olympics. All these provide opportunities that outside of the usual ones.
I do not know enough of martial arts sports so I won't comment aside from suggesting karate should be out. And although I feel for hua tian, Equestrian too. Along with the very outdated pentathlon.
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
I'll redirect you to the third paragraph here which addresses what China can do but probably shouldn't:
2020/2021 Tokyo Summer Olympics
OMG! India got there first ever gold! Kai Hind crowd must be going wild! Credit where credit is due. Congrats to India.
www.sinodefenceforum.com
If China wants to be more competitive in team sports and rich people sports like swimming, it will need to nurture sports culture in its population. This will hinder its academic focus and its tech drive, which is the real competition, not a game. Right now, China does a really great job of getting as many golds as it can for morale-boosting using a relatively genetically homogenous population and picking only the poorest people in this population in a state-directed effort so as not to hinder the academic focus of its cities and its middle-upper class. China's gold medalists are specifically selected for showing athletic potential in early youth but poor academic potential as no parent is likely to give up a class ace to a sports trainer; it is a last resort for kids who don't have a reasonable path to an academic future. This means that China correctly prioritizes education and technology and uses what's left over for sports.
Do I think that China should nurture sports culture in its entire population to win more Olympic medals? No, not now. Now we need as much speed as possible in the tech race. Once America is beaten, however, China can go in this direction, primarily for promoting life balance and health, and secondarily to be competitive in international sports. By this time, China can maintain its tech lead with its very large and very intelligent population on cruise control and afford to divert these resources to sports and athleticism. It will probably even happen naturally without much government initiative when China is ahead and the pressure is off. However, I have to note that going into cruise control is dangerous; because you can't pull out. You'll be locked into it as people go willingly from high pressure to low pressure lifestyle but not the other way around. The US would probably happily throw away its gold medals if it could put its population into Manhattan Project mode on 5G and lithography/semiconductors. But it's not going to happen. Once the population is in BBQ and beer sports fist-bump mode, it's easier to move a mountain than to move them back into tech competition mode.
But now is not the time; now is the final dash for tech supremacy, so the final dash for the Olympic medals is on the backburner. China's approach now is the best; get as many medals as possible without disturbing the culture of insatiable, no cost too great obsession for academic/STEM excellence.
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China has a good shot in boxing. Zou Shiming won gold in 2008 and 2012.
Equestrian can be improved. They are one of the best Asian teams and with good coaches they can get within at least top 8. China has a long cavalry tradition and it should be put to use.
Karate isn't permanent.
I think it's difficult to agree on world class players sometimes cuz there is really no strict definition of the meaning. It can be pretty arbitrary as it's not like a certain amount of goals or appearance for national team qualify a player as one. While I dun think Son is a true world class player I can understand why those who consider him as such.
The days of China throwing money at foreign players and coaches is over. There was a crackdown on this practice few years ago. I agree with the scouting and letting them play in top European leagues. But the Chinese football authorities know this too. Problem is reality bites. Simply there is no great young talent. A few with potential who were sent to football teams overseas did not progress as well as expected. The problem is much more difficult to tackle and cannot be solved in near future. Unlike Brazil or Argentina or the European countries, there simply isn't a conveyor belt of young talents being produced year by year. Heck even Korea and Japan is doing much better than China on this front.
The problems with Chinese football have been well documented. I guess I'm just going to repeat ad nauseam wats already been discussed for over a decade.
Swimming, athletics, rowing, canoeing, cycling should be the targets. They have many events where just a couple of great athletes can win multiple golds. They are racing events where there is no influence of judges. Swimming and athletics get the most media attention during the Olympics.
Ah thanks for the detailed explanation. Perhaps for selfish reason as a sports fan and China supporter, I let personal emotions get the better of whats really good for China right now.
Kinda having withdrawals now that the Olympics are over. The 16 days been really fun to catch the games and the spectacle and following up with people's reaction on weibo. I know most will not agree with me but really like watching the Olympics lol. Maybe more than even the world cup.