This Olympics is different

19 mins audio

Article/Blessing CALD Editorial；Photo/Internet

Athletes take part in the athletes parade during the closing ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the Stade de France, in Saint-Denis, in the outskirts of Paris, on August 11, 2024.

A few days ago, the once-in-a-century Paris Olympics (the last one was held in Paris in 1924) came to an end. Like all festivals in the world, there is no such thing as a banquet that never ends. What is most valuable about the Olympic Games is the spirit of solidarity, mutual goodwill, care and resonance, which has shown us the different styles of the new generation of sports people. As the Olympic Games are coming to an end, the editorial team of this magazine would like to review some of the features of this year’s Olympic Games.

Australia’s medal haul
The final day of the Paris Olympics ended with good results for Australia in the basketball and cycling events. In the Women’s Basketball quarter-finals, Australia defeated Belgium 85-78 to collect a bronze medal. Australia’s final tally of 53 medals at the Games, including 18 gold, 19 silver and 16 bronze, was the fourth highest in the world rankings, and the best ever in Australia’s Olympic history. In addition, the Australian team demonstrated an impressive strength and diversity of athletes at this year’s Games.

Australia sent more than 460 athletes to compete in 33 sports. This is the third largest Australian Olympic team ever to compete overseas, after Tokyo 2020 (486 athletes) and Athens 2004 (482 athletes). Notably, the Australian team includes many Chinese faces, whose stories not only showcase their own struggles, but also reflect the multicultural nature of the Australian community.

William Yang, 25, has grown up in both China and Australia, and is one of the most exciting newcomers to the Australian swimming team: he was diagnosed with a spinal tumour that left him almost unable to walk, and then suffered a severe tear in his shoulder after surgery and more than four months of rehabilitation. However, William overcame all these obstacles to finish second in the 100 metres freestyle with a personal best at the Australian Championships in April 2024 and was selected for the Olympic Team. 30-year-old Catriona Bisset is the dark horse of the Australian track and field team: the mixed-race son of an Australian father and Chinese mother from Nanjing, China, in 2019 broke the 43-year old record for the best time in the world. broke the Australian women’s track record in the 800 metres, which had stood for 43 years. 26-year-old Tiffany Ho is another high-profile Chinese badminton player. ……

The story of the Australian Olympic Team is not just about sporting achievement, it is a microcosm of Australia’s multicultural society. Through the struggles of the Chinese athletes, we see resilience, courage and dedication to pursuing their dreams. It is worth mentioning that most of Australia’s Olympic athletes are not professional athletes, and they all have their own day jobs. For example, Tiffany is not only an excellent athlete, but also a registered nurse working at Concord Hospital in Sydney. They train and compete in their spare time and eventually make the national team, sweating it out on the field of play.

Table Tennis: The ‘Rice Circle’ invades Table Tennis?
The women’s singles final of the Paris Olympics on 3 August was the culmination of a battle between two Chinese players. It should have been a match that Chinese people should be proud of, but the atmosphere was surprising. The crowd cheered for Sun Yingsha, while even the coaching staff of the Chinese table tennis team looked on in dismay, and no one applauded Chen Meng as she defended her title against her teammate Sun Yingsha. Some people claimed that Chen Meng was fighting against all Chinese people, while the official media angrily criticised that the mess in the rice circle had eroded Chinese sports. So whose interests have been touched by Chen Meng’s title defence?

There is indeed a culture of the ‘rice circle’, and it makes sense that the young Sun Yingsha, whose fan base far exceeds Chen Meng’s, would be fanatical about her performance. This kind of scene is neither patriotic nor sportsmanship. The fans’ strong love is so obvious that it has to be expressed by denying another person, commonly known as “pulling a stomp”. It’s just that the media is now focusing on criticising the culture of the rice circle, which is a suspicion of shifting the focus. In fact, the core nature of the whole incident is the sharing of benefits within the Communist Party of China (CPC)’s sports, which completely disregards the spirit of sports and turns the competition into a distribution of benefits.

What is even more shocking is that before the final matches of the table tennis and tennis women’s singles at the Paris Olympics, Yili (China’s largest dairy products company) placed an advertisement on the big screen in Sanlitun, with the content of ‘Grand Slam Demon Sha’ – Yili thought that the organisation had arranged for this, and that Sun Yingsha, being young and now the world number one, would have even more gimmicks and higher commercial value after she won the championships. The organisation has arranged for her to win the championship so that everyone can share the money. In this case, Chen Meng might have disregarded the rules and won the championship by her own strength, thus upsetting the balance of interests within the table tennis team. She would have offended many people, including the team leaders. This is very similar to the Ho Chi Lai incident. Back then, table tennis national player Ho Chi Lai was kicked out of the national team and left for Japan because she did not listen to the internal arrangement of giving up the ball for her teammates.

Chinese officials have always attached great importance to the table tennis team, and in some ways it has even become a political symbol. Whoever wins the Olympic Games has not only huge commercial interests behind it, but also a lot of political interests. There are many factions within the table tennis team. There are so many players in the Chinese team who have the strength to win the championships that there are not enough to go around, and they tend to designate the major tournaments internally, so that they are divided up amongst themselves. The essence of competitive sports is to prove one’s strength through fair, just and transparent matches. This final has torn the fabric of China’s system and restored sport to its ‘true form’.

Athletes in the Shadow of War
The full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia from 2022 onwards has dealt a heavy blow to the country’s sports scene. Only 140 Ukrainian athletes competed at the Games, the lowest number since Ukraine’s 1996 participation. According to a British government report released in July, since 2022, more than 487 Ukrainian athletes have lost their lives as a result of Russian aggression, including civilians killed by war and air strikes, as well as those who died defending their country, such as weightlifter Pelesenko, who was killed in action on 5 May 2024 while representing Ukraine at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

The results of Russian and Belarusian athletes in the current Olympic Games are even more dismal. According to the Olympic spirit, warring countries are not allowed to participate in the Olympic Games, which represent peace. Therefore, Russia is not even allowed to use the name of the ‘Olympic delegation’ in this year’s Olympics, and is almost completely banned from participating in the Games. Apart from Russia, Belarusian athletes were also given the same treatment on the grounds that Belarus had helped Russia in the Russo-Ukrainian War and was regarded as a partner in the war.

The Ukrainian authorities and the sports community have continued to launch an unsuccessful campaign calling for a total ban on Russian and Belarusian athletes. In the end, 17 athletes from Belarus and 15 from Russia competed as ‘individually neutral athletes’ (AIN) – and because the Russian authorities also exerted pressure on Russian athletes intending to compete, the number of Russian athletes who ended up competing was far less than the quota offered by the Olympic Games. AIN athletes were not allowed to AIN athletes are not allowed to take part in the opening ceremony, are not included in the medals table, and are only allowed to use the AIN flag and a lyric-less piece of music after winning a prize, unlike other neutral athletes who are allowed to use the Olympic flag and the Olympic anthem.

A few days ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was trying to hold another ‘Friendship Games’ – from 15 to 29 September, shortly after the Paris Olympics – to which he intends to invite thousands of athletes from more than 70 countries around the world, and to which he will also set high prizes. The Russian and White media did not even broadcast the opening ceremony and the competitions of the Paris Olympics. On the contrary, according to a number of media outlets, the propaganda machines of the two countries reported, manipulated and disseminated a great deal of negative news and fake news about the events and the organisation of the Olympic Games. Sports should be just sports, and the Olympics should not be tainted by politics – this should be what many athletes, and most spectators, think in their hearts, but unfortunately, this statement is often taken as a wish rather than a reality.

The ‘World’s Best’ Olympic Prize Money
According to Forbes, there are 206 participating countries or regions in the Paris Olympics, 33 of which will award cash prizes to the winners, among which 15 countries or regions will award more than US$100,000 in prize money. Among them, 15 countries or regions will offer cash prizes of more than US$100,000. Among them, Hong Kong will offer the highest cash prizes, with the gold medallists receiving HK$6 million, which is the highest in the world, nearly three times higher than Israel, which ranks second, and 59 times more than Australia, which ranks 33rd. The ‘Queen of Sword’ Kong Min-wan and ‘God of Sword’ Cheung Ka-long, who won the gold medals in women’s heavy fencing and men’s foil respectively, have already won HK$6 million respectively, making many athletes from other regions envious.

Interestingly, the Hong Kong Government’s treatment of Kong Minnan is obviously differentiated between close and distant relationships. Cheung Ka Long, who is also a fencer, also won a gold medal and defended his title, but Kong Min Long was accompanied by the Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism, Mr Yeung Yun Hung, while Cheung Ka Long was not. Obviously, the Hong Kong Government is aware of the importance of using sports as a means of united front. Supporters of democracy in Hong Kong have also begun to split into two camps: One camp says that since she has won the gold medal for Hong Kong, there is no reason why we should not support her, while the other camp thinks that since she is a member of the Chinese Communist Party, even though she won the gold medal in the name of Hong Kong, her Hong Kong is the Hong Kong of the Chinese Communist Party.

What aroused even more heated public opinion is that the thesis on ‘Reflecting on the way to improve the electoral system of HKSAR through the Occupy Central Incident’ written by Jiang Min-min, who won the gold medal, was found out by netizens. The thesis is very close to that of the pro-Beijing mouthpieces, saying that the 2014 Hong Kong Umbrella Movement (also known as the Occupy China Movement) was illegal, and even called the Occupy China Movement ‘extremely harmful and has far-reaching consequences’. The paper also claimed that Beijing’s political stance on the ‘Hong Kong version of the national security law’ in 2021 was to ‘improve one country, two systems’ and ‘improve the election system’, and to fix the loopholes in the law to ‘resolve the seizure of power by anti-China and anti-Semitism forces in Hong Kong from the institutional aspect’, which immediately became controversial.

Jiang Min, 30, is also known as a ‘school bully’. She graduated from Stanford University, majoring in international relations, and later studied for a master’s degree in law at Renmin University of China. Currently, she has retired from the military and has taken up a new position as the Assistant Manager of External Affairs of the Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC), a subordinate of Raymond Tam, the former Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs of Hong Kong. Being an Olympic gold medalist and politically correct in her studies, Minnie has been fully recognised by the Hong Kong government and Beijing. Some public opinion believes that it cannot be ruled out that Minnie has been regarded by the Chinese Communist Party as a key target for cultivation, with the ultimate goal of grooming her to become a rising political star.

China and USA tied for first place in gold medals

This year’s medal standings are highly competitive, starting with the swimming events. The Australian women’s swimmers were so good that they topped the medals table for the first few days, before dropping to the fifth or sixth position. Traditionally, the medal table is based on the number of gold medals, followed by the number of silver medals, and then the number of bronze medals for the same number of countries. For a long time, the USA had a slight advantage in the number of gold medals and was ahead of China, while the USA had a huge lead in the total number of medals. In the last two days, China overtook China in gold medals and became the leader until the last gold medal in women’s basketball was won by the United States, and then the United States was able to equal China’s 40 gold medals but became the leader of the medals table with 44 silver medals.

Such a result shows that China is already a world sports power that can rival the United States. Of course, the number of Olympic medals is not directly related to whether or not the country attaches importance to the development of national sports. In China, the results of sports competitions are also regarded as the political achievements of the government and officials, and China’s brilliant results represent the government’s ability to be accountable to the Chinese people. Interestingly, China’s characterisation of the medal table is that China has always been at the top of the gold medal table, with the USA catching up in the last category and tying with China for first place in the gold medal table. This is a clear attempt to avoid the embarrassment of China coming in second.