Outside View

Hard work pays off

An English language newspaper in Thailand, The Nation, praised the country's Olympic heroine.

On August 10, Prapawadee Jaroenrattanatarakom lifted an aggregate 221 kg to set a new clean-and-jerk record and bring Thailand a first gold medal in the Beijing Olympics.

The medal was the result of eight years of hard work, during which the 24-year-old only went home for vacations three times. The young woman from Nakhon Sawan even thought about giving up the sport after a series of disappointments.

While other girls in her village dreamt about being beauty queens, Prapawadee, better known as Junpim Kanthatien, chose weightlifting to prove her worth. She gave up her feminine curves and endured grueling training sessions. Prapawadee comes from a poor family in the rice-growing province. Her father was a construction worker who worked odd jobs to make ends meet.

When Prapawadee started weightlifting seriously, the sport was not so popular. But at the Athens Games four years ago Paweena Thongsuk became the first Thai woman to win Olympic gold - the first in another sports apart from boxing.

Prapawadee almost gave up the sport, thinking that her best shot at the Olympics had passed. She later changed her name after a nun suggested it would bring a change of luck for the better.

During the World Championships in Chiang Mai last year, Prapawadee dislocated her shoulder and fell while competing.

This time, when the opportunity came, Prapawadee seized it. Last Sunday she displayed her strength and determination, the newspaper said.

Prapawadee has proved when there is a will, there is a way.

All eyes on Radcliffe

The British newspaper The Guardian called on readers to pay more attention to the Olympic perils of Paula Radcliffe than to her achievements.

In her first games, back in 1996, Radcliffe was third at the bell in the 5,000m but came in an exhausted fifth. In 2000, having led from the front until the final lap of the 10,000, she was edged out to finish fourth.

Four years ago, her dream of a marathon gold ended in tears and humiliation in the stifling Athens suburbs. Radcliffe can be relied on to deliver a drama - but which one will it be? The omens have hardly been good: a stress fracture of the left thigh in the spring, a bite from a poisonous spider a month ago, and now, her first competitive race of any kind for nine months in the heat of Beijing.

If the brutal pace of the women's 10,000m final is any guide, Radcliffe will have to run the race of her life to win this marathon. But do not rule it out. Even at 34 and now a mother, she remains the world marathon record holder and she is still the one to beat.

For years, Radcliffe has been Britain's most consistently outstanding athlete, a woman both impossibly remote in her obsessive excellence and yet startlingly normal amid her trials and triumphs. Britain has been on a long journey with Radcliffe. Somehow it is hard to believe that this is its final lap.

Technical wonders

The Indian newspaper, The Hindu, said to compete at the Olympics level sportspeople today must be technothletes.

This year's Olympics perhaps more than any other are about far more than the goal of pushing the human body to excel in sporting competition. Embedded in the multiple narratives of the Beijing Games, technology stands out as one strand deserving of some unpacking. Both the Olympics and the experience of their audience are increasingly shaped by technology, which has begun to exert a profound impact on our ontological certainties.

Take the most anticipated and watched episode of the Games as an example: the opening ceremony on Aug 8. The show was a technological marvel of jaw-dropping sophistication, featuring 15,000 performers who transformed the Bird's Nest Stadium into a scroll upon which 5,000 years of Chinese history was enacted with perfectly coordinated precision.

Technology is at the heart of nearly every aspect of this Olympics. These are the first Games to be broadcast live on the Internet. Virtually every device that can receive a signal is receiving them from Beijing - as podcasts, RSS feeds, e-mail alerts and videos. The American network NBC that has bought broadcasting rights to the Games will present more than 3,600 hours of Olympic coverage in total, more than the sum of all the hours of Olympic TV coverage ever.

People around the world are moving beyond spectating and actually participating in the event on Web blogs and other virtual communities. Individuals who have never met in the "natural" world are busy interacting in cyberspace, swapping, buying and selling tickets.

What the 2008 Olympics really drive home is how enmeshed technology is today with both sporting talent and the experience of its audience.

Tumbling records

Qatar's Gulf Times found that world-class swimming is drowning in record-breaking performances. More than 60 new records have been set so far and the Olympic Games in Beijing is not even over yet.

Feats like those in China's capital - where 16 world records fell in the first four days of competition - have not been seen since the Olympics in 1976 in Montreal.

Could it be doping? New technologies? Scientific discoveries? Around the edge of the swimming pool at Beijing's futuristic Water Cube swimming venue, there are many theories.

Experts in the sport are having a hard time coming up with an explanation. Several factors taken together could be the cause, they say.

"For one thing, there is the suit," Germany's top coach, Oerjan Madsen said, referring to Speedo's hi-tech, full-length "silver bullet" LZR Racer.

"I think the main reason, though, is to be found in training based on science," Madsen said. "Fewer mistakes are made because of it. There are also more and more full-time professionals in many countries who live from swimming and are able to pursue the sport in a completely different way."

Dirk Lange, the German coach of South Africa's Olympians, named another reason that has always proved a winner at past Olympics: "The top people have a killer instinct."

Beijing good choice

An Associated Press - IPSOS survey showed that the majority of Americans think staging the Olympics in China was a good decision despite Beijing's problems with human rights and air pollution.

Several US newspapers released the results of the poll, which indicated that most of the respondents backed the International Olympic Committee's selection of Beijing as a great choice rather than a mistake.

According to AP, the poll was conducted during the Games' early days, which went smoothly, although an American was fatally stabbed at a tourist site in an incident apparently unrelated to the Olympics. The poll involved telephone interviews with 1,001 adults and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

AP quoted an American history professor from Idaho, a strong China supporter, as saying, "the more the Chinese become dependent on the rest of the world, the more the rest of the world has influence".

Even as Russia and Georgia began to fight as the Games began, the poll noted that 74 percent of the respondents said "the Olympic movement has been successful in its historic goal of making the world more peaceful through sports".

And while half of the respondents want to see the US team win as many medals as possible, a similar number of people would rather see excellent sports performance from the athletes no matter where they come from.

Global leadership

Former special assistant to then US President Ronald Regan wrote an article for the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, saying China is heading toward global leadership at its own pace.

"How fast and how far it moves is up to the Chinese people far more than to those watching from outside the nation's borders," the article said.

As China begins to showcase itself through the Olympic Games, "the role China plays on the world stage in the coming decades may determine how future generations view the 21st century".

The article noted that much of the debate over China and its Olympic Games reflects a special Western conceit: that America and Europe can change China. Critics want Beijing to achieve a lot of goals such as an improvement in human rights, promotion of democracy in Zimbabwe and growing influence in Sudan.

However, none of these goals are within the powers of the West to impose. "The China that could be browbeaten by outsiders disappeared long ago and the most powerful incentive for China to change its behavior is the desire to play a larger international role."

The author dismissed some critics' view of China as a threat, emphasizing that Beijing is not a natural enemy of US, let alone Europe.

He explained that China's military build-up does not threaten the security of the US but its ability to act as the hegemon in East Asia and along China's borders. Moreover, the US retains enormous advantages for economic and political influence when competing with China.

"The best way for Beijing to succeed is to encourage foreign trust in both nation and government," the article said.

Shot of patriotism

The US WAVY TV news said the Beijing Olympic Games has driven a shot of patriotism into Chinese Americans who are watching the Games from a world away and are cheering for their homeland.

The TV interviewed several Chinese teachers and students who are teaching or studying in the US. They were impressed by China's tremendous progress and change.

And the reports showed two Chinese-American teenagers, who were both born in the United States, watching the Games with pride.

"This is where we're from and this is China's time to shine. But also as an American, I think it's time to just be involved in supporting your country," Eric Ma, a high school student, was quoted as saying.

The TV station said the Games definitely promotes a sense of national patriotism for American-Chinese.

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(China Daily 08/17/2008 page11)