Turning the World Upside Down

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t week, a rather small weight lifter named Shi Zhiyong ambled onto a stage in Athens and heaved an Olympic record 152.5 kg before catapulting himself into an ecstatic backflip when he realized he had struck gold in the 62-kg competition. The 1.6-m Chinese athlete, who wistfully lists his hobby in the Chinese sports-delegation handbook as "food"—he had to shed 4 kg in four days to make the qualifying weight in Athens—later apologized for what he modestly considers his underwhelming physique. "I think my muscles are kind of small," says Shi, his compact body rippling with the kind of brawn a pocket Popeye might enjoy after a hefty serving of spinach spanakopita. "Please don't judge my body too much, or I will get embarrassed."

The rest of the world, though, cannot help but watch in wonder as Shi and 406 other members of China's Olympic delegation flex their muscles on the world's largest sporting stage. China has long been considered the province of leaping gymnasts and twirling divers, but the rise of this 24-year-old Asian Atlas underscores the country's dramatic impact on the medal rankings after just two decades of Olympic participation. Three days into the 16-day Games, China was already halfway to its officially projected medal count of 20 golds. By Saturday, the country's medal pouch was bulging with 39 honors of every hue. Victories came in China's usual strongholds of diving (three golds so far), shooting (eight medals), weight lifting (six medals) and table tennis (four medals). But China also collected laurels in sports in which it barely had a presence a decade-and-a-half ago, like judo and fencing, as well as coming back in disciplines such as swimming, where the nation is desperate to expunge its drug-tainted past with a new crop of far less hulking female swimmers. On Wednesday, 20-year-old Luo Xuejuan frog-kicked her way past Australian world-record holder Leisel Jones to capture gold in the 100-m breaststroke with an Olympic record time of 1:6.64. "China is back," intoned Luo's coach Zhang Yadong with Schwarzeneggerian bravado. "Before the race, I told Luo that no one could beat her. In the future, there will be many more Chinese heroes like her in the pool."

Bountiful as Athens has proved, this month's Games are a mere dress rehearsal for the triumphant display that China hopes to produce at the Beijing 2008 Olympics. The nation's sports czars caution that this year China might not match the 28 golds it collected in Sydney, largely because some of its veteran athletes were left home in favor of up-and-coming talent. More than 80% of China's current Olympians are first-timers, and their average age is just 23. China is looking to these rookies to use their Athens experience to thrash the rest of the world in 2008, when Beijing hopes to challenge America's right to call itself the world's lone athletic superpower. "In previous Olympics, the most important thing was to achieve gold medals," says Ren Hai, a professor at the Beijing Sport University who studies China's Olympic history. "This time we have another goal, which is to prepare the younger athletes for the 2008 Olympics."

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Despite their tender age, plenty of China's novice Olympians are winning big in Athens. Nineteen-year-old marksman Zhu Qinan, who had participated in only two international competitions before last week, set a new world record during his successful gold-medal quest in the men's 10-m air-rifle competition, while 21-year-old Liu Chunhong broke three world records in the women's 69-kg category in weight lifting. Four years after China sent its first-ever female field-hockey team to the Olympics, the Chinese became the first squad in Athens to win a semifinal berth. As of Saturday, the 3-0 Chinese team hadn't conceded a single goal. Although China's field-hockey program for women was founded in 1980, the program languished for years, relying on uninspired castoffs from local basketball and soccer teams. That changed dramatically in 2001, when Beijing was awarded the 2008 Games and funding kicked into high gear. "When I was an athlete, we had to train on grasslands," says Miao Lin, a hockey referee in Guangdong province. "Now, we've got more money and the training facilities have improved." Earlier this year, China assembled its first-ever national junior team, so a promising hockey crew will be ready for the Beijing Games. "I believe we'll be able to contend for the gold in 2008," predicts Guangdong women's hockey coach Zhang Naiwu, seven of whose former athletes are on the Athens squad.

That medal reverie is shared by China's hoops team, which is currently relying on one oversize 23-year-old to carry it past traditional basketball powers. Like an ancient Chinese warrior, the nation's 2.26-m center Yao Ming had vowed not to shave for six months if the Chinese didn't make it to the Athens round of eight—an empty threat from a guy who looks like he can hardly grow a single whisker. But in their debut game against Spain, Yao bucketed only 12 points, and the Chinese suffered a 83-58 drubbing. After the game, Yao, China's flag bearer at the Olympic opening ceremony, was uncharacteristically despondent about the national squad: "I feel so disappointed. I lost all my hopes for this team." He even publicly considered withdrawing from the national team, sending China's sports propagandists into a tizzy. The Chinese state-run media reported one basketball official accusing Yao of "splitting" the team and blamed the U.S. and the NBA for corrupting the Chinese giant. Two days later, the two-time NBA all-star's decisive actions proved louder than his dissenting words when he led China to victory against New Zealand with 39 points and 13 rebounds. But the Chinese lost to Argentina 82-57 on Thursday, an undistinguished performance leavened only by the fact that the much-vaunted American team, padded with icons like Allen Iverson and Tim Duncan, spent the week stumbling against such basketball afterthoughts as Puerto Rico and barely pulled off victories against Australia and Greece.

Indeed, China's Olympic delegation has endured plenty of first-time flubs in Athens. The country's newbie Olympians have tripped up most spectacularly in sports that the People's Republic usually dominates. Last Tuesday, China's women gymnasts—a misnomer, really, given that most of the athletes are no older than 18 and look half their age—botched their performances in the team final, finishing a miserable seventh out of eight. "The team is very young," explained coach Lu Shanzhen. "We did very badly today, but I hope to build a dream team by 2008." A day earlier, in the choke performance of the week, China's male gymnastics team tumbled from gold-medal shoo-in to fifth-place finisher. The disastrous showing owed largely to the mishaps of one 19-year-old Olympic newcomer, pommel-horse world champion Teng Haibin, who, in rapid succession, stepped twice out of bounds in the floor routine, slipped on the parallel bars and, in a crowning, cataclysmic moment, swung himself right off the high bar.

As the Japanese gymnasts vaulted into first place, with the Americans and Romanians rounding out the medal count, Teng sat slump-shouldered on the sidelines, his face set in a stunned frown. Finally, teammate Yang Wei, a veteran gymnast who captured a gold team medal and a silver in the individual all-around in Sydney, leaned over and patted Teng. "He shouldn't worry, because he will have another chance in Beijing," commented Yang. "Teng's still a young boy full of hope." Two days later, Yang himself floundered, finishing seventh in the individual all-around event, after being pegged for the top honor. "In the future, I'll practice even more," he promised. "I'd like to say to the Chinese people that I'm very sorry."

In China, most people didn't seem overly concerned with the Chinese mishaps in the Athens gymnastics hall. After all, there was lots else to cheer, not least the clean performances of China's weight lifters—in contrast to athletes from seven other nations who had to pull out of the chronically drug-plagued sport because of failed doping tests. Olympic fever diverted Shanghai's residents from the oppressive heat blanketing the city, and plenty of bars cranked their air-cons and stayed open all night so that sports fans could catch every second of live action in Athens. With hundreds of millions of Chinese tuning in to the Games, state broadcasters admitted that viewers were even being siphoned away from the endless documentaries celebrating the 100th anniversary of Deng Xiaoping's birth. China dedicated three national channels to the Olympics, and the country's state media dispatched 160 reporters to Athens. Cui Ying of the Shanghai Morning Post, a daily with a circulation of 600,000, estimated that her paper will spend about $120,000 covering the Games. Still, hefty advertising has offset such costs; China's state-run CCTV, for instance, says it is raking in $60 million in ad revenues—a remarkable feat in a country where advertising is still an infant industry. Everything about the Olympics has been marketed, right down to sponsorship of the televised medal count that flashed on TV screens several times an hour, courtesy of the motor-oil brand Kunlun.

Such contracts, of course, pale in comparison with the frenzy that will accompany the Beijing Games. Hundreds of multinationals are already jockeying for a chance to bid for Chinese ad contracts once Athens wraps up. To prove that the Chinese capital is worthy of such lavish attention, Beijing earlier this month announced its latest urban makeover campaign: $12 million for thousands of new toilets, including a stable of self-cleaning "five-star" lavatories. Already, Chinese tourists in Athens are sniping about how little Greece has to show off for its Olympics. "Athens is in Europe, but it is quite undeveloped," sniffed Zhao Xiyan, a textile exporter who spent last week waving the Chinese flag at the gymnastics venue. "Beijing will be much better than this." Weight lifter Shi, who hopes to be back for more Olympic glory in four years' time, dutifully listed an expanded highway system and improved English from the city's taxi drivers as his greatest desires for Beijing 2008. But, he added: "If the city looks beautiful and I win gold again, that would be the most perfect situation of all." The world's strongest little man has spoken, and all eyes will be on Beijing as the flame is passed from the Olympic birthplace to the very future of global sports.