Sports culture would benefit our children

Opinion / Zou Hanru

 Sports culture would benefit our children
By Zou Hanru (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-03-24 06:36

Fifteen-year-old Christopher Harris aspires to be the youngest person to
scale Mount Qomolangma (Everest). The Australian teenager will make his
attempt on the world's highest peak in May, when he will be three months
younger than record-holder Sherpa Ming Kipa.

Harris, who has already conquered four of the world's seven highest
peaks, started rock climbing at the age of five. That means he took to
the sport because he loved it, or simply because he was good at it.

People like Harris are becoming increasingly rare in today's world of
sport. There indeed are exceptions, like the football crazy Brazilians,
Argentines and other South Americans. Children there play football
because they love it; fame and fortune come later. But alas, such kids
are still exceptions in this age of medals, fame and fortune and
lucrative sponsorship deals.

A significant number of children today take to sport (or are rather
pushed by parents or picked up by watchful coaches) for the lure of
medals and money. Sport unfortunately is becoming less of a culture and
more of a regime.

What might be driving children away from sport, and stopping their
parents from encouraging them, is the intense competition even at local
levels and the recognition of only winners. The pride of just taking part
in an event seems to have been lost.

China today is a sports powerhouse. It was second only to the United
States in the gold medal tally at the 2004 Athens Olympics, and some
pundits expect it to take the top slot at the 2008 Beijing Games. But we
still depend on the national sports training system to churn out
champions.

We enjoy supremacy in a number of disciplines but lack a more general
craze. It's true that the national system has created world-class
performers and brought us medals. But don't we need a parallel mass sport
culture? Why can't children and their parents be made to realize that
stars can be born outside the national system too?

An example of what the national system can do is Han Xiaopeng, who won
China's first gold in the Winter Olympics in Turin. A Jiangsu resident,
Han had not even seen snow before he started skiing. But eleven years of
rigorous training later, the aerial skier made himself and the nation
proud.

For every Han, however, we could have a Hu Kai. Though not a product of
the national system, he won the 100-metre sprint at the Macao East Asian
Games in November last year. The "Spectacles Flying Man," as he has come
to be known, is an economics and management student at the prestigious
Tsinghua University. And if we think his Macao triumph was a flash in the
pan, we are absolutely wrong. He won the sprint gold at the World
Universiade in Izmir, Turkey, two months before Macao.

But the real measure of Hu can be gauged from his casual approach to
running he is still not sure whether he will become a professional
athlete. Ask him why and he will tell you: "I run for the love of it, not
to earn fame and fortune."

That should be the spirit.

But the world of most urban children today revolves around the "idiot
box" and the Internet. Sitting idle is not only making them obese, but
also exposing them to spondylitis, eye problems and pornography. Could
not the same "idiot box" and Internet be used to fight this problem by
giving Hu and his likes more coverage?

The Hans can be produced, but the Hus have to make themselves. Let the
joys of personal triumphs like Hu's inspire our children.

Email: zouhr@chinadaily.com.hk

(China Daily 03/24/2006 page4)

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