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)