We must pursue the cutting-edge level in order to enjoy the international competitive scene.
--Yao Ming
Today, the spectacle of the Tokyo Olympics is about to be unveiled, however, just in the afternoon of the day before yesterday, the Olympic tournament has been the first to kick off the curtain, China's women's soccer debut, but with a score of 0 to 5 lost to the Brazilian team.
Although the results are not satisfactory, but compared to the men's soccer, women's soccer performance has shown progress - the men's soccer even failed to qualify for the Olympic Games. In the past, netizens often use the women's soccer results as a laughingstock, and I'm afraid that the scale of this laughingstock will be even larger by the standards of this year's Olympic results.
In the seven collective ball sports -- basketball, volleyball, baseball, rugby sevens, handball, field hockey and water polo -- our women's team advanced, while the men's team was completely wiped out. Of all the sports in which our country participated, women participated in as many as 15.
Our Olympic delegation arrives in Tokyo
The fact that there are more women than men in the Olympic delegation is not unique to our country. Traditional Olympic powerhouses such as the United States, Russia and Great Britain also face the same problem. However, the situation in our country is indeed more serious.
At this year's Olympic Games, our delegation sent a total of 432 athletes, of whom 298 were women, accounting for 68.9%, more than twice as many as men.
And, in the last three Olympics, the ratio of men to women in our Olympic delegation has become more and more imbalanced. 2012 London Olympics, 171 male athletes, 225 female athletes, female athletes accounted for 56.8%. 2016 Rio Olympics, 160 male athletes, 298 female athletes, female athletes accounted for 65.1%. And for this year's Olympics, the percentage reached 68.9 percent.
Women not as good as men? However, while cheering the excellent results achieved by female athletes, we should also rationally think about why there is such a drastic imbalance.
01. What are the reasons why there are more women than men?
The root cause of the "women's strength and men's weakness" of our Olympic team can be traced back to the 1988 Seoul Olympics. That year, our delegation won only five gold medals, in sharp contrast to the 15 gold medals won at the previous Olympic Games in Los Angeles, and the country was disappointed.
Prizes awarded to our delegation at the 1984 and 1988 Olympic Games
Officials of the National Sports Commission, which is responsible for sports, wrote a report before the Seoul Olympics predicting that our delegation would win 6 to 8 gold medals, which was the true level of our sports at that time. The 15 gold medals won at the previous Olympics were due to the fact that many Eastern European sports powers boycotted the Olympics in the United States for political reasons, which gave us a chance to win gold in many sports.
However, the public's view of the decline in performance is very simple: the athletes sent out were not capable, did not work hard, and disgraced the country. Li Ning avoided the crowds when he returned home and left in the dust, but was still taunted by the airport staff, "It's not good to fall where you are, but to fall there?"
As a young man, Li Ning was known for his hard training.
Faced with the strong emotions of the public, the National Sports Commission realized that: although there are many people in our country who do not like sports, and even do not know the rules of the sport, but on the day of the game, everyone will ask who won - the gold medal, so that people feel the face of the light.
In 1995, the National Sports Commission officially released an outline of actions aimed at advancing the results of competitive sports in China, known as the Olympic Competition Program.
It is clearly stated in the outline that our country needs to make achievements in the next Olympic Games, Asian Games and other international competitions, which is a very arduous task, and that it is necessary to train a group of professional athletes and provide them with all-round protection. However, the funding that the State and society have invested in the Olympic program is limited, so it is necessary to "ensure that key projects are safeguarded and that the allocation of resources is more reasonable".
What are the key projects?
The National Sports Commission also wrote clearly in the syllabus, and later someone summarized that the answer was just five words: "small, skillful, difficult, women and few", i.e., small-ball sports, skillful sports, difficult sports, women's sports and sports with a small number of competitors. These kinds of projects are either the yellow race has the advantage of talent, or the international competition is not yet fierce, or cultivate one or two top players can produce results.
Most women's sports have been in existence on an international scale for a shorter period of time than men's programs. Not many countries have the ability and willingness to invest in women's programs, and the competition is relatively less intense. When we raise the whole country to cultivate a group of excellent athletes out, there is a fairly high probability of winning gold and silver.
In 2004, the women's ping pong team won the Olympic collective gold medal
This strategy is, in fact, the wisdom of the old patriarchs: Tian Ji Jockey Horse. Use the gold medals of many niche sports to make up for the lack of gold medals in mass sports. Although there is a difference between the spectacle and attention of sports programs, the competitive spirit of the performance is the same, and the gold medals are naturally equal.
02. Olympic competition, two sides of the same coin
Judging from the Olympic results, the implementation of the Olympic Games Competitiveness Program has been very well executed. Our country has made steady progress in the Olympic gold medal table, and the women's event has become the mainstay of our delegation's gold and silver medals, with the number of gold medals exceeding that of the men's event for seven consecutive sessions.
However, from the point of view of the development of sports for all, this program has considerable drawbacks: the imbalance of "small, skillful, difficult, women, few" - big ball sports, power sports, low-difficulty sports, men's sports, and sports with a large number of competitors have been carried out very unsatisfactorily over the past 20 years. The development of the program has been very unsatisfactory.
Think about it a little and you'll see that men's soccer meets four of these five criteria ......
This year's Olympic Games, China's men's collective ball game almost a total wipeout, and the Olympic competition program of this strategy is inseparable from the relationship. Football, basketball and volleyball have slipped over the years, also unrelated to this strategy.
For more than 20 years, other countries have been vigorously carrying out these projects, and although we have also made progress, it is not as fast as others. The result is that the gap between us and the international advanced level is widening.
For example, our women's soccer team has won the Asian Cup for seven consecutive times since 1986, and has also been the runner-up in the World Cup and the silver medal in the Olympic Games. At that time, we were at the advanced level of international women's soccer.
1999 World Cup, our women's soccer team 5-0 Norwegian women's soccer team
But after the new century, women's soccer performance began to decline:
In the 2004 Olympics, our women's soccer team lost 0-8 to Germany;
In 2011, our women's soccer team failed to qualify for the World Cup and then failed to qualify for the Olympics in 2012;
A five-goal loss to Brazil in the opening match of the 2021 Olympics exposed a huge gap with the advanced level of international women's soccer.
2021 Olympics, our women's soccer team 0-5 Brazilian women's soccer team
Similar slippery track, perhaps also about to perform in China's men's basketball team: the same was also a consecutive years of Asian supremacy, this year also began to no Olympic Games.
2019 Men's Basketball defeated the World Cup, lost through the Olympic qualifications, the Basketball Association Chairman Yao Ming accepts the interview, blunt: "This time is considered to be another time we open our eyes to see the international bar, the level of the international level and we (pulled) is really getting bigger and bigger."
03. Kool-Aid Gold Medal? Kool-Aid Sports!
This year's Olympic Games have been characterized by an epidemic and a difficult start. In response, the Olympic Committee added the phrase "more unity" to the slogan "Higher, Faster, Stronger".
In fact, our people's feelings about the "unifying" effect of the Olympic Games are much earlier and more profound than those of the international community.
After his defeat in Seoul in 1988, the writer Zhang Shishan wrote an article on our right to participate, which spoke the mind of the general public: who among the sons of the Yellow Emperor does not long for the revitalization of the nation? Even if it is just a victory on the sports front, which is guaranteed by the blood transfusion of all the people?
At that time, China's national strength was not yet strong, and its economic take-off had just begun. In order to enhance national self-confidence and pride, we needed gold medals and success. It was against this background that the Olympic Competitiveness Program was born, and it succeeded and played a great role.
But we should also understand, this main focus on niche projects of the parochial strategy, is a stopgap measure, can not be taken as a miraculous plan. The strength of a country's sports, the gold medal is only decent, the key is the foundation.
The question arises, how do you get the foundation right?
Some people may say that once we focused on the development of those niche projects because of our limited economic conditions, but now we are the second largest economy in the world, so it is not enough to transfer the experience of those niche projects to the mass projects.
In fact, we've already tried.
In 2014, Cai Zhenhua, who combines the three identities of a decorated player, a decorated coach and a decorated chairman of the National Football Association, assumed the presidency of the National Football Association. This personnel arrangement, the purpose is clear, is to teach the "national ball" experience to the national football.
It's just a shame that the market size of the two programs is not in the same league, nor is the amount of money that needs to be invested.
The strength of table tennis in China is due to a whole set of youth training system and coaching team, from amateur sports school to professional sports school to provincial team to national team, there are enough talent reserves in each layer. This system can be supported by the national treasury, but it is not possible to count on the national treasury alone for programs like soccer and basketball, which are fiercely competitive throughout the world.
What is the way out?
Yao Ming, president of the National Basketball Association, gave the answer in that interview.
"It is necessary for us to go and climb as hard as we can, from the professional league to training to the combination of sports and education for the youth. We have a strong determination to go on. I won't stop the reform, we can't fail, we must go on more firmly. We now know the international format and it is necessary to look towards the international advanced level."
Yao Ming consoles Yi Jianlian at 2019 Men's Basketball World Cup
Promoting the commercialization of sports, the development of professional leagues, and the use of market forces to enhance the physical education of young people and the training of industrial personnel is the format of the international advanced level, and it is also our way out.
On the down side, our sports industry is still very immature.
In many programs, if a person does not make it out of the path of being an athlete, they will have a hard time finding another job to support themselves. While it is a mere one in ten million loss for the country, it is a one hundred percent failure for the individual. No parent wants their child to take such a treacherous path, and the size of the market and the size of the selection of athletes is nowhere to be seen.
Indeed, as Mr. Yao said, we need to "crawl as hard as we can".
From a good point of view, today engaged in sports business to face the public opinion environment, has than when Li Ning faced, too much better.
For example, Fu Yuanhui, just because of the "exhaustion force" of the best efforts and optimism, will be loved by the people; another example is Liu Xiang, when he was subjected to a lot of abuse, and now many people leave a message that owes him an apology.
Liu Xiang returns to the top after Olympic withdrawal in 2010
The reason for this is that our country has become strong, and our self-confidence and pride no longer need to be expressed in gold medals. Most people have come to understand that sports should be a joyful endeavor, and that doing one's best is the most important thing, with results coming second.
When everyone understands this and is actively involved in sports, we can truly become a sports powerhouse.
