WHY CHINA WON THE 2008 OLYMPICS

Originally published at Caste Football in 2008, and republished to coincide with the Rio Olympics.

by Colin Liddell

Some countries will do anything to get an Olympic medal. Georgia, for example, went to the trouble of recruiting both its men and women’s beach volleyball teams from players rejected from Brazil’s national team. This meant that players who spoke no Georgian, knew almost nothing about the country, and had only visited it once or twice, briefly, competed under its banner. Luckily, justice was done and both teams failed to get a medal.

Georgia’s neighbour Turkey was more successful. It got a couple of silver medals from the Ethiopian long distance runner Elvan Abeylegesse. Compared to the ‘Georgians,’ at least Abeylegesse had lived in the country for a few years and had also married but then divorced a Turkish national. Still, the reason she finished second in the 5,000 and 10,000-meter races wasn’t because she was Turkish. Despite what it said on her passport or vest, she was still biologically benefiting from having the lightweight frame and high red blood cell count of an Ethiopian.

While Georgia’s South American beach volleyball players and Turkey’s African long distance runner were exceptions in their teams, a few countries were content to recruit almost entire teams from foreigners. The athletic team of the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain is largely made up of Moroccans brought there by the financial bribes made possible by oil wealth.

Even the host country China has shown that it is prepared to dilute the defining national principle of Olympic teams in order to get its flag flying at medal ceremonies. In preparation for the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese recruited the top Japanese synchronized swimming instructor, Masayo Imura, to train their team, resulting in a first medal in the synchronised swimming team event.

Life's a beach, then you become Georgian.

Such tactics obviously undermine the spirit of the Olympics, and turn it into a grubby, money-spinning, political posturing farce. But they also reveal a ruthless search for talent.

Regardless of the fact that Georgia’s beach volleyball players couldn’t even find the country on the map, the Georgians knew that the Brazilians were the go-to-guys when it came to beach volleyball. In the same way, the Turks knew they were on to a potential winner when they handed over a Turkish passport to a top Ethiopian long distance runner.

The Chinese, too, were very particular. They didn’t bother recruiting a Japanese coach just to make their team look more ethnic, diverse, and colourful. They went to Japan because they knew that one reason the Japanese have excelled at synchronized swimming for so long is because of their excellent, hard-working coaches.

This is quite different from the American approach, where the emphasis is clearly not on developing, selecting, and attracting the best potential athletes. This is demonstrated by both the foreign-born athletes and American-born athletes selected to represent the USA in these Olympics.

First, the foreign-born athletes: Unlike Turkey, Bahrain, or Georgia, most of these were genuine immigrants, not top foreign athletes offered special inducements to help raise the national medal count. Compared to the 27 foreign-born athletes at the 2004 Olympics, the US Beijing team included 33 foreign-born athletes. These included a Russian-born gymnast, Nastia Liukin, four Chinese-born table tennis players, and seven members of the track and field team, including three 1500-meter runners: Bernard Lagat (Kenya), Leo Manzano (Mexico), and Lopez Lomong (Sudan).

Apart from Liukin, who won five medals including gold, none of them proved world beaters. The three 1500-meter runners in particular did extremely poorly. Manzano, Legat, and Lomong were all easily eliminated in the 1500-meter heats and semi-finals, finishing last in their respective races. Although they may have won the right races to qualify for the Olympic team, they were clearly nowhere near good enough to represent a nation that has traditionally dominated athletics.

America loves a loser as long as he's not White.

As the selection of the slug-footed Lomong to carry the American flag in the opening ceremony revealed, many of the foreign-born athletes were there more as political gestures, rather than as expressions of a determined competitive spirit.

Lomong, a Sudanese ex-refugee, served ostensibly as an ‘external symbol’ aimed at criticizing China’s support for a brutal Sudanese regime. But he also served as an ‘internal symbol’ aimed at a domestic American audience, embodying the notion that America is the dumping ground of refugees, an open borders country that has no right to a White identity.

This was also a factor in the presence of the other foreign-born non-White athletes. A look at Manzano’s career soon reveals evidence of extreme ethnic favoritism. Despite poor form in his final year of high school – running 4:26 over 1,500 meters and being overweight – Manzano, who was still a Mexican citizen at the time, was nevertheless selected to run for the NCAA Texas Longhorns.

"I red-shirted for cross country in my freshman year," Manzano revealed in an interview. "I couldn't even keep up with teammates on runs. I think 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes at the most. I was so weak and heavy."

Although he later improved, the fact that he was inducted into a top NCAA team when his performance was substandard simply reveals the bias towards White American athletes in the system.

Having the right number of non-White athletes in the team, regardless of ability to win, is clearly a major motive. This factor also explains much about the US-born segment of the team, especially when contrasted with the best athletes from other countries from around the World. As these countries are more interested in winning than making politically correct, affirmative action gestures, several interesting contrasts arose during the games.

The established dominance of certain racial groups in specific sports helps to highlight the US selection bias and anti-White racism employed in selecting America’s "preferred" sporting representatives. In sports like weightlifting, wrestling, the shot-put, women’s high-jumping, swimming, cycling, and the javelin – all sports in which Blacks usually do badly – the US team was surprisingly represented by Blacks.

While Blacks may have been among the US athletes available at the qualification events, the fact that all these sports continued to be dominated by Whites or Asians from other countries revealed that they have less potential ability in these areas. For America to concentrate on developing Black talent for these events was therefore a tremendous waste of White resources.

Half Black + Half Japanese = 
Approximate White Man???

Even in the decathlon, where the half Black half Japanese athlete Bryan Clay won gold, the fact that most of the other top competitors were White and that the sport is still dominated by Whites, shows that the USA would probably get better returns from finding and developing the best White decathletes than in implementing a wide-ranging policy of sporting ‘affirmative action,’ which discourages White participation but lights up – and also opens up its checkbook – whenever any ethnic talent shows up.

By choosing to develop Black and non-White talent in sports that are clearly more suited to White athletes, the USA sporting establishment has shown a massive lack of ambition and has greatly handicapped itself in the battle to win medals and remain the number one Olympic nation.

In the same way that wide-ranging, exorbitantly expensive attempts to find and develop White world beaters in the 100 meters, 10,000 meters, or table tennis would be mocked, America’s attempts to have world-beating Black weightlifters, Black swimmers, Black shot putters, Black wrestlers, Black cyclists, Black high jumpers, Black javelin throwers, and even Black or semi-Black decathletes are ridiculous. Indeed it is nothing more than a severe abuse of the available potential.

Until US sport shakes itself free of an ‘affirmative action’ mentality that ignores the best potential talent in many areas just because it’s White, the USA will continue its Olympic decline. For political reasons, of course, there will be no significant change. This means that in the coming years, America will not only be outstripped by China, but probably also fall behind a resurgent Russia.