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This Week in China Sports: NFL Draft, new CBA champion, Olympic gymnasts stripped of Sydney medal

Friday, 30th April 2010 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)

Ed Wang was, indeed, picked up in the NFL draft. He went to the Buffalo Bills with the 140th pick, becoming the first Chinese-American drafted by an NFL team. Titan Sports News, China's top sports newspaper, featured Wang on its front page.

The Guangdong Southern Tigers beat the Xinjiang Flying Tigers 103-94, winning their sixth Chinese Basketball Association title. Guangdong took the series 4-1. Only the Bayi Rockets, the Chinese army team, have won more titles (8), and Guangdong has been the CBA champion all but one of the last seven years. (Xinhua)

Bob Donewald, coach of the Yao Ming-owned Shanghai Sharks of the CBA, was tapped to coach the Chinese men's national basketball team through the end of the year (Washington Post). Donewald coached NCAA basketball at several different Midwestern universities throughout the 80s and 90s. He will lead a Yao-less team at the world championships in August and the Asian Games in November.

The International Olympic Committee stripped China of its bronze medal in the gymnastics team competition in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, after Dong Fangxiao was ruled to have been underage. The bronze now goes to the United States team. Ironically, Dong was outed by her accreditation papers for working as an official at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. That paperwork has her birth date as January 23, 1986, and not January 20, 1983, as she had declared in Sydney. Olympic gymnasts must turn 16 in the year they compete in an Olympics, per restrictions set by the Federation Internationale Gymnastique (AP via ESPN).

Kenny Huang is NOT denying rumors published in the Sunday Mirror that he is in talks to buy Liverpool Football Club. He only denies speaking to a reporter from the paper, and said he would not comment on the rumor.

China may not have a team in the FIFA World Cup, but they do have a presence. Many of the South African flags currently selling well in the host country, are made in China and apparently the imports were not quite printed right (Mail & Guardian)

Tags: basketball, Bob Donewald, CBA, FIFA World Cup, Guangdong Tigers, gymnastics, IOC, Kenny Huang, NFL, Olympics, Shanghai Sharks, Xinjiang Tigers, 黄建华

Sport-by-sport breakdown of China's 2010 Winter Olympics performance

Monday, 1st March 2010 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)

China finished the 2010 Winter Olympics with a total of 11 medals, the same overall tally it reached in Turin, but with more gold medals (5 compared to 2). That leaves China in 8th place if you count by combined medals, 6th if you measure in golds. In the previous seven Winter Olympics, China had only won 4 gold medals altogether (China in the Winter Olympics: Facts and figures. China's winter sports officials are congratulating themselves and looking toward the future, reports Reuters. Below is a sport-by-sport breakdown of China's performance in the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.

Pairs figure skating: 1 gold, 1 silver

The highlight of these games for China came right at the beginning, when Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo ended the Russian domination of pairs figure skating, and their own 20-year hunt for Olympic gold. The married couple won on Valentine's Day, which was also the first day of this year's Lunar New Year. Tong Jian and Pang Qing won silver, and another Chinese pair came in fourth, a good indication for China's future in this sport.

Skating: Short track 4 golds, speed skating 1 bronze

China's female short track speed skaters made an unprecedented sweep, taking all four gold medals. Wang Meng followed up her 500-meter gold medal with a win in the 1,000-meter event, and skated on the gold medal-winning 3,000-meter relay winning team. With four golds, a silver and a bronze over her career, Wang is China's most decorated winter Olympian. The 3,000-meter gold came at the expense of a disqualification of the South Korean women, on a close judgment call that went in China's favor (China's team: Wang Meng, Zhou Yang, Sun Linlin and Zhang Hui). China's top two skaters—Wang and Zhou—were both disqualified in the semifinals of events that the other eventually won gold in. Zhou won the 1,500-meter event. In speed skating (not short track), Wang Beixin won a bronze.

Skiing aerials: 1 silver, 2 bronzes

Another event China had several hopes in was skiing aerials, and going into the women's final, all seemed to be going perfectly, with four Chinese skiers making the cut. But Australia's Lydia Lassila won out over the field, leaving Li Nina with silver and Guo Xinxin with bronze. The men's team was strong as well, but only Liu Zhongqing managed to medal (a bronze), while two others came in 6th and 7th.

Curling: Bronze medal

China's hopes for its world champion women's curling team to win gold came up short, ending in a bronze. China's curlers—Wang Bingyu, Liu Yin, Yue Qingshuang, Zhou Yan, and Liu Jinli—have an average of 25, much younger than any of the rest of the world's elite, so Chinese curling is sure to be a force in Sochi.

Tags: 2010 Winter Olympics, China's 2010 Winter Olympians, curling, figure skating, Olympics, skiing aerials, speed skating, Vancouver Olympics, Wang Meng, Zhou Yang

Third 2010 Winter Olympics Medal: Wang Beixing, speed skating

Wednesday, 17th February 2010 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)

Wang Beixing (王北星) won China's third medal of the Vancouver Olympics, taking bronze in the 500 meters women's speed skating event with a time of 38.48. Gold went to Lee Sang-Hwa of Korea and silver to Germany's Jenny Wolf. Wang, originally from Harbin, is coached by Canadian Kevin Crockett and has trained in Canada since 2003, when she was 18 years old. She went into the Feb. 16 competition ranked second in the world, and is a four-time world runner-up.

Wang skates again on Thursday, Feb. 18 at 1:00 PST (5:00 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 19, Beijing time), in the 1,000-meter event. She is currently 4th in the world rankings for the 1,000.

China finished the day at 7th overall in the medal rankings. In related news, the city of Harbin is also ranked 7th.

Wang Beixing image: Sports.mop.com

Tags: 2010 Winter Olympics, Olympics, speedskating, Wang Beixing

The Chinese National Games: Olympic deja vu

Friday, 30th October 2009 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)

My trip down to Jinan for the Chinese National Games last week revealed that the event had more in common with the Olympics than a love of opening and closing ceremonies (Watch this). In fact the whole event had a bit of a déjà vu vibe, except for one glaring difference: Everyone competing and nearly everyone in attendance was Chinese and few people outside of China had any idea it was going on. Not surprisingly, the event borrowed a lot from the 2008 Olympics, some good and some bad.

White elephants

A perfectly fine stadium sat mostly unused in a downtown location, while much of the competition took place in an Olympic Green-style setting on the outskirts. There a brand new tennis stadium, gymnasium, natatorium and the Games' showpiece—the 60,000-seat Jinan Olympic Stadium (pictured below)—played host to competition.

Considering that the Bird's Nest has hosted three events in the 14 months since the games (a martial arts show, an Italian soccer/football game, and a production of the Italian opera Turandot), odds are not good that Jinan's stadium will be pulling in revenue any time soon. Also facing a bleak future is the 445-room Sheraton Jinan Hotel, which opened across the street in September. It's a great location if you're in town for an unlikely sports event at Jinan Olympic Center—terrible if you have business downtown.

Empty seats

The National Games dominated the national sports television channel, CCTV5, for the duration of the competition. And if you watched track and field events on TV, you would have heard a roaring crowd in the stadium. But the stadium was actually only 10 percent full when I was there, and the crowd noise was played over the loudspeakers. Filling seats was a problem at the Olympics, too, even though everything was officially sold out.

Beijing 2008:

Jinan 2009:


Ticket design: Where have I seen that before?

Beijing 2008 athletics ticket:


Shandong 2009 athletics ticket:


Awesome volunteers

Beijing set a new standard for Olympic volunteers, in terms of both numbers and attitude. Jinan's volunteers were just as patient and enthusiastic, whether helping spectators find the right entrance or raking the sand between innings at the baseball games. And I didn't do a study, but ran into a surprising number who spoke English well.

Paranoia

In Beijing, it was protests and terrorism. But in Jinan organizers focused on another threat—they weren't taking any chances that the 50 spectators inside the stadium would set off a swine flu outbreak. Health workers checked the temperature of everyone who entered the stadium.

Exploding lunch boxes

The concessions lacked that undisputed highlight of the Olympics—5 RMB cans of Tsing Tao beer. But they did have the self-heating lunch boxes that were available at some Beijing venues (watch Wall Street Journal China correspondent Sky Canaves' demo here).

Familiar Font

Signage at the 2008 Olympics, Beijing:

Signage at the 2009 Chinese National Games, Jinan:


Tags: 2008 Beijing Olympics, Jinan, National games, Olympics, Shandong, ticketing, venues

Gold medals and golf: What Olympic inclusion means for the game in China

Thursday, 15th October 2009 ~ Sam ~ Link ~ Comments (0)

In a country where the Olympics are seen as the summit of sport, the ramifications of last Friday's International Olympic Committee (IOC) announcement that golf and rugby sevens are to be included in the 2016 and 2020 Games will be huge.

Golf, in particular, has had a short and startlingly fast development path in China. From the first golf club, Zhongshan Hot Spring Golf Club, which opened in China in 1984 to Mission Hills, home to the World Cup of Golf with its 12 courses designed by the top industry names such as Nick Faldo, José Maria Olazabal, Greg Norman and Ernie Els, golf in China has mimicked the economy in its rapid growth. The re-admittance of golf into the Olympics could speed up the game's growth in China even more by attracting money, government support and popular interest.

Asian golf in general is booming right now and most recently it was South Korean Y.E. Yang's PGA victory over Tiger Woods in the States that shocked the world. Mirroring Yang's career path many Chinese "first generation" golfers are also from under-privileged family backgrounds and are self-taught, picking up the game in their late teens just as Yang did. Chinese golfer Wu Ashun is an example of this phenomenon; determination and luck have enabled him to work his way up from a 19-year-old first-timer to the top amateur national player and now to a top three ranking on the Omega China Tour.

Wu, whose talent was discovered by a Hong Kong charity fund, is not satisfied yet however and says "I would rather be a small fish in a big pond than a big fish in a small pond." Describing the China Tour as a small tour is no understatement. Most of the golfers outside its top 20 struggle to break even on their travel and accommodation expenses.

It is a situation that Dan Washburn, author of the as yet unpublished book "Par for China," has likened the situation of China's pros to that of the early 20th century in America where professional golfers, who were mostly immigrants, were socially ranked somewhere between traveling salesmen and itinerant farmhands. Of course, the US PGA Tour has since grown to become the largest golf competition in the world and it will be interesting to see how the IOC's latest decision affects the growth of golf in the world's most populous nation.

"Par for China" is more than just a description of golf in China; it also uses the metaphor of the development of golf epitomizing the country's development as a whole. Washburn describes "golf as a barometer of economic growth" and certainly golf has only existed since Deng Xiaoping opened the country in the 1980's. A key issue for the rapidly developing China, both politically and within golf, is land usage rights. The official stance is that golf courses built on farmland are illegal, but on the outskirts of the wealthiest Chinese cities--where the rich of the city meet the poor of the country--the farmland is often obtained through backdoor connections and bribes to local officials. The property is then listed as housing estates and turned into a golf course.

Another aspect of golf that reflects a topical issue in contemporary China is the question of "accessibility for all" versus elitism. As promoted by the IOC, the decision to include golf in the Olympics will certainly bring added funding to the sport in countries such as China and India, but the question remains whether this money will go towards the development of the sport at the grassroots level where it is needed the most or if it will stretch the gap between China's rich and poor even more. The reality, though, is that golf will struggle to ever become the people's game due to exorbitant greens fees (an average round costs $152 USD, the most expensive in the world) exacerbated by the government's well-intentioned efforts to curb construction which decrease supply and put further upward pressure on prices.

China has seemingly been the fastest to rebound from the economic slowdown and the golf industry will likewise continue to flourish, with the China Golf Association predicting that by 2020 China will have 20 million golfers. Tiger Woods has stated that he intends to participate in the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro and having witnessed last year what China can do when they focus their efforts on the Olympics, it would be no surprise to see a Chinese golfer challenging him for the gold.

Tags: Dan Washburn, golf, Mission Hills, Olympics, Omega China Tour, Y.E. Yang, Zhongshan Hot Spring Golf Club

BOCOG reports 1.16 million RMB profit

Wednesday, 24th June 2009 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)

China made RMB 1.16 billion (US $170 million) in operating profit from the 2008 Olympic Games, a Chinese government auditor recently reported (full story from the Financial Times here).

The Beijing Olympic committee reaped its revenues primarily from sponsorships and TV broadcast rights, according to the Financial Times. Its expenditures were on "transport, accommodation, medical services and temporary event infrastructure." The expenditure numbers do not include construction of the 93 new facilities required for the games. And the Financial Times points out that absent from the report are the amounts spent on improving air quality or improving the capital's infrastructure with new subways and roads.

Here are some other numbers from that report:

RMB 20.5 billion (USD $2.925 billion): Revenues as of March 15 for Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) RMB 800 million above budget.

RMB 19.34 billion (USD $2.829 billion): BOCOG expenditures

RMB 19.455 billion (USD $2.846 billion): Investment in 93 new sports venues

RMB 3.5 billion: Initial investment in Bird's Nest stadium

RMB 150 million: Annual maintenance cost for Bird's Nest

30,000: Maximum number of tickets that current operators of the Bird's Nest can sell daily for tours of the white elephant

Tags: Beijing Olympics, Bird's Nest, Olympics, sports venues

Chinese Olympic Committee $120 million strong for London 2012

Thursday, 23rd April 2009 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)

One of the questions that will be asked again and again between now and the summer of 2012 is, "Can China do it again?" Will China, as a guest this time instead of the host, be able to repeat or improve upon its 51 gold medal performance in Beijing?

A recent Reuters story reports that China is at least throwing money at the challenge, investing $120 million in its athletes' preparation for the 2012 games. Unfortunately, the story raises more questions than it answers, but here are some of the key points from the story:



Tags: Chinese Olympic Committee, London 2012, Olympics, sports marketing

Yao quitting the Chinese national team?

Friday, 24th October 2008 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)

Chinese media (beginning, reportedly, with Shanghai's Oriental Sports Daily) began reporting earlier this week that Yao Ming had announced plans to quit the Chinese national team.

The center has since denied the reports to the Houston Chronicle. But his denial wasn't too forceful.

"I haven't announced that," he told the Chronicle. "I think now there is no national team and all I want to worry about is playing 82 games and the playoffs."

Yao had made comments to the Houston Chronicle before playing in his third Olympics earlier this year, indicating that this would be his last Olympic appearance. He will be almost 32 years old when the next games take place in 2012 in London. And with injuries dragging down his NBA career, including a broken foot that nearly kept him out of the Olympics, it's not much of a stretch to think the big guy might need a break.

In other Yao news, his doctor in Houston is reportedly seeing Liu Xiang next week, to see if he can help the injured hurdler.

Tags: basketball, Houston Chronicle, Liu Xiang, Olympics, Yao Ming

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