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The “Glory” Behind China’s Olympic Success
China’s dominance of the Olympic Games are impressive, but their success comes with a price. As the photos in this article will demonstrate, the pursuit of glory can be taken too far, as very young child athletes are pushed beyond reasonable limits in the training centers across China.
While the photos below may explain China’s success in the Olympics, they also highlight the human cost of this “glory” to their child athletes, who are pushed by their parents and coaches to tears and physical pain. Of course this doesn’t only occur in China, but the photos below are being circulated by Chinese bloggers, some out of disgust, but some also out of pride.
The photos below have been culled from a few Chinese websites discussing this topic. I have included rough translations of the captions. Many of the captions use the word “help” to describe a coach’s assistance. I will include that word in quotes, because these photos look more like forced endurance than any sort of assistance. Click photos to see a larger version.
Nanning City, Guangxi Province, Stadium amateur sports school. A coach standing on the girl’s legs to “help” her stretch.
A little girl crying because of the pain. One coach said with a smile that this is a daily scene.
Children doing handstands. After five minutes, the children began to shake and cry, but fearing their coach, they remained in this position as the coach began counting to 100. Shortly after, they began practicing other sports.
This photo is described as “warm-up training” at a prestigious primary school before the start of the gymnastics team’s daily training.
A coach “helping” a student to do flexibility training and “push the limits.”
The calloused hands of a Chinese child athlete.
We read that gymnastics athletes are younger than those in other sports. This is a daily warm-up stretch, which is described as the “most painful” for the children. This photo was taken at the the Jiaxing City Sports School gymnastics hall, showing a little boy’s flexibility training with the “help” of his coach.
The feet of a Chinese child athlete.
This Chinese blogger discusses many of these photos. His caption (sorry for the weak translation) reads: This group of “star of the road from here,” shot in Nanning Stadium group from small children to sporting glory for the country to train hard, recorded from different angles and different levels of awards in the country.
See more high-resolution photos here.
What do you think?
Are the above photos merely a culture’s way of toughening up their child athletes on the path to glory, or are they evidence of abuse? Are gold medals worth it?
Filed under: Politics
These Chinese children athletes are obviously abused so as to fulfill parent and gymnast instructor’s needs. It is unforgivable for the Chinese people to do nothing about this horrible, painful way of “living”. Daily torture is going on in places such as Nanning Stadium in China. Hope human rights organizations can do something about this.
You have to understand that this goes back to China’s rich and painful history. The national hero Mao (who killed millions of his own people) took a country full of culture and intellect and turned it into infertile, dry, intellectual wasteland. When you’re poor your whole life, money and pride are all that matters. The communist mantra of “the state first” is ingrained into the mind of many middle aged individuals in China. Your cries and whines do not matter. Your pain is nothing. The pride of China is all that matters. Not every Chinese parent will let there children be abused just as not every American parent will allow it either but some will – we should not judge a nation’s people based on few individual’s actions. Unfortunately, the Chinese government cares little about air quality, water quality, poverty, crime, etc. Selling their cheap crap to American and European markets, exploiting third world country’s resources to power their economic machine, and getting respected as a world power are all that matter. The Olympic losers should just be glad they don’t represent North Korea.
This is complete and total child abuse. These children are being tortured, their little bodies being pushed beyond anatomical limits. I would like to stand on the coaches legs as his knees are hyperextended and ligaments snapped. This is just unimaginable cruelty.
This is Fucking RIDICULOUS!!!! Enough said!!!!
people that hurt kids should get fired n parents should stand up for their kids n parent that don’t n people that hurt kids like that should go to jail for along time
It is inhumane to treat children like this to win gold medal in Olympics, looking at picture was so horrible how these innocent children are facing them day to day.This is crime and not training.
Chinese must be bann from the Olympics if they are doing this criminal act to the small kids, they dont deserve the Olympic Medals.
Why we closed our eyes and mouth for this criminal act and child abuse? where are our human rights and child protection agencies? I beg them to
help these little innocent child please!!!!!!