China’s Games live up to hype
Mark Sappenfield | 08.15.08
China’s Olympics have been China’s Olympics. We knew the Chinese were coming, but we weren’t expecting them from every direction: weightlifting, shooting, wrestling, gymnastics, diving, even swimming.
If an opening ceremonies that included everything but live, fire-breathing dragons didn’t tell us that the Chinese were serious about this whole Olympic thing, the first week of competition certainly has.
As of Thursday, the gymnastics and diving venues could have simply left the Chinese flag in the gold-medal position. In seven events, there have been no other winners. At the weightlifting gym and indoor shooting range, the Chinese flag has been raised the highest in 10 of 16 events.
All that stands between China and Olympic domination, it seems, is Michael Phelps and every flexed muscle in his body, an American Great Wall. Perhaps he can solve the mortgage crisis and the weak dollar, too.
President Bush saw him set one of his world records. Don’t ask which one, though; we’ve lost track. His father saw three women win America’s first medals – all in one event, fencing.
There was rain. There was also smog, or haze, or some version of atmospheric opaqueness for which the International Olympic Committee has yet to invent a word. But it didn’t really seem to bother anyone but NBC, which has hardly taken its panoramic camera out of the box. Let’s just say that while the venues looked spectacular, the sky looked yucky.
Kobe Bryant has made his appearance, as have tennis star Rafael Nadal and soccer superstar Lionel Messi.
The sun, however, is still in hiding. Otherwise, we have seen how the Olympics can be transformed by a nation that embraces them.
There is no doubt that China – and the Chinese – desperately wanted these Games. And for every rafter-rattling call of “CHI-NA! CHI-NA!” there are a hundred grinning volunteers, an image of a China far more humane and hospitable than it often gets credit for.
At the end of the first week of competition Sunday, we say goodbye to swimming, to rowing, and to the drama of team gymnastics. Week 1 has been Olympic in every sense of the term, and all evidence suggests that the next leg will not disappoint.
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For US gymnasts, 1-2 is the perfect number
Mark Sappenfield | 08.15.08
In the end, the women’s all-around gymnastics gold medal came down to a simple matter of mathematics.
Yang Yilin, Shawn Johnson, and Nastia Liukin might disagree.
After all, it was they who stood on four inches suede-encased wood, the crowd breathless, two nations waiting. It was they, who, separated by 0.6 points heading into the final rotation, hurtled across the floor, spun above the weight of the world’s expectations, and landed cat-soft on the mat, not a foot out of place.
But in the end, there was nothing between gold and silver – nothing between Americans Liukin and Johnson – but 1.4 points.
Johnson could have worked it out in her high-school classroom – a word problem with an Olympic gold medal as the reward for the correct solution: Liukin’s difficulty score on uneven bars was 1.4 points higher than Johnson’s, and during the other three rotations, Johnson could not make up the difference.
That it came down to this – to the ethereal perfection of decimals and ones and zeroes, is a testament to the near-perfection of the gymnastics itself. Two days back in time is enough to see how often mistakes play a decisive role in determining Olympic gold. But today, there were virtually none to see.
“In all rotations [the medal winners] were all excellent,” says Liang Chow, Johnson’s coach. Speaking of Johnson, he adds: “She could not have done anything better.”
And this is a testament to Nastia Liukin. Once again – as if we needed the confirmation – Johnson proved that she is the most consistent female gymnast in the world, and that her level of consistency across all apparatuses has no equal.
But today, Liukin at last put together the performance that the gymnastics world had been waiting for. There was no doubting her ability to do it. She had nearly done it once before, taking silver in the all-around at the 2005 world championships.
But after that, injuries intervened. Then, Shawn Johnson did.
There is no sense that, even before today, Liukin viewed Johnson, her Olympic roommate, as an impediment. Quite the opposite, actually. “We’ve become better and stronger gymnasts because of each other,” says Liukin.
The proof stood on the medal stand today, together. It was the third time a nation had taken gold and silver in the women’s all-around, and the first for the US. In fact, it was only the third gold in the event for US and the second silver.
The post-match press conference was a curious sight in a sport so often laced with angst and acrimony: Each athlete, each coach realizing this was the only possible result. Just as Chow agreed that Johnson could have done no better, Yang’s coach said the same of her.
Because it all came down to mathematics. When factored in with her performance “B” score, Johnson actually lost 1.375 points to Liukin on the bars. On vault, Liukin’s worst event, Johnson made 0.85 points back with the meet’s best vault.
But the two were too even on the apparatuses that remained: beam and floor. They tied on floor – setting the meet’s joint highest score of 15.525 when the pressure was greatest – and Liukin actually edged Johnson on beam by 0.075, again setting the meet’s highest mark on the apparatus.
Here, the math was against Yang, too. With lower start scores on beam and floor than either Liukin or Johnson, she could not catch the former or hold off the latter.
For once, let us congratulate the gymnastics federation. The new scoring system worked exactly as it should, choosing from among the three most talented gymnasts by the best possible measure: the difficulty of their routines.
Imagine trying to sort out that mess with the 10.0 scoring system alone.
Perhaps it lacked the poetry of Nadia Comenici’s perfect 10s during the Montreal Games. But just as then, the numbers gave the best sense of the perfection on display.
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Olympic tennis: Upsets expected, even of Federer
Mark Sappenfield | 08.14.08
Tuesday night, Roger Federer was playing the No. 457-ranked player in the world. By the end of the second set of a 6-2, 6-4 win, he was giving away points simply to get the match finished.
The Swiss player’s strategy was clear: He had broken his opponent’s serve, he only had to hold serve himself through the rest of the set and he would win without expending too much energy. It worked. For a night.
Tonight, he lost to American James Blake in what should have been a surprise to no one. Much might be made of his exit from the Olympic tournament. He is an easy target now. But this loss against a fitter, faster player is less an indictment of his form than a confirmation that he is not – and never was – tennis’ iron man.
The Olympic tournament is already scheduled tightly to get it out of the way as soon as possible before the US Open begins on Aug. 25. Players are playing every day. Throw in doubles and rain delays, and some are now playing twice a day – as was Federer.
Wednesday, Federer won two matches, one singles and one doubles. Federer almost never plays doubles. Though he is proficient, Federer playing doubles is a bit like Michael Jordan playing outfield for the Birmingham Barons – it is not somewhere he was ever meant to be.
Yet for love of country, there he is. Tonight, little more than an hour after his singles loss to Blake, Federer was out on the court again to play doubles with Stanislas Wawrinka – sacrificing himself for Switzerland against two doubles specialists from India.
Four games into the match there was another rain delay. Federer sat beneath an umbrella – waiting for the rain to stop – at 1:15 a.m.
If he had beaten Blake, he would have had to play again the following day at 4 p.m. in the singles semifinals.
The Olympics offer an advantage to the fittest players or the freshest players. Federer was never at the top of this list, despite his evident desire to honor his country.
There is no question that Federer is in eclipse at the moment, but these Games are evidence of something other than a general decline.
His heart is in the right place, even if his legs are not.
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Another Chinese gold, with grit
Mark Sappenfield | 08.14.08
I had become numb to the Chinese gold-medal haul – another anonymous weightlifter, another picture of a victorious Chinese athlete holding an air pistol, whatever that is.
Not having seen virtually any of their gold-medal events, they all assumed a monotonous familiarity – China had more money to spend on sport than the rest of the world combined. It had built a better machine, and that machine was winning.
Then I saw Zhang Juanjuan.
She is undoubtedly a product of that same system, but in her individual archery gold medal was something I had not imagined to be a part of China’s gold-medal avalanche:
Grit.
Zhang came in ranked No. 27 in the world, less a machine than a mercenary. She might not always be the most consistent of performers (gasp!), but in knockout competitions – like the Olympics – she is deadly.
Just ask the Koreans. They had not lost this event since 1984.
Joo Hyun-Jung entered the competition ranked No. 3 in the world. Zhang dispatched her tidily in the quarterfinal.
Yun Ok-Hee entered the competition ranked No. 2 in the world. She also held the record for firing the best recorded round of archery of any woman in the history of the sport. In May of this year, she fired 12 arrows at a target at an event in Turkey. Eleven hit the bulls-eye – 119 of 120 possible points. Zhang dispatched her, too, tying the Olympic record of 115 in the process.
Park Sung-Hyun entered the competition ranked No. 1 in the world. She was the defending Olympic champion and had set the Olympic record of 115 earlier in the day.
On her second arrow, Zhang fired a 7, which, against the Koreans, is a bit like offering to play without your left arm. It is a mistake from which you rarely recover.
Yet from that point on, there seemed only one winner. The Chinese crowd, perhaps not on their best behavior, was a factor. But surely Park has faced worse than a few untimely whistles. Nor would it have mattered had not Zhang come on like the Beijing rain itself, steady, unrelenting: 9, 9, 9, 9, 10, 9, 10, 10…
With her nation watching, she was slowly turning the screw – there was no question of her age or of the country piling up medals in weak events. This was just her nerve against the best in the world. Six hours later, Chinese tennis player Li Na would repeat the feat, beating Venus Williams, two-time defending Wimbledon champion, 7-5, 7-5.
When Zhang’s final arrow hit the target – a 9 – she had won by a single point.
Amid China’s medal flood, perhaps the most impressive of all might be one of the least noticed.
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Amid US gymnastics disappointment, Shawn Johnson’s grace
Mark Sappenfield | 08.13.08
When the women’s gymnastics team competition was all but over, save China’s final turn on the floor – when American team captain Alicia Sacramone no longer had anything to distract her from the mistakes that had made a gold medal impossible, Shawn Johnson sat beside her.
In the battle of the world’s two best teams, China would win. The US, who had promised so much, would be silver medalists.
Sacramone looked as though she was on the edge of a cliff, holding back that inevitable moment when the disappointment in her falls on floor and beam would overwhelm her and plunge her headlong into tears.
But Johnson smiled that smile that comes so easily for her, and took Sacramone’s arm in hers, almost as if they were an old married couple on a park bench. For a moment, however briefly, Sacramone smiled, too.
No matter what Johnson does in two days’ time on the women’s all-around competition, I hope the world will remember that image – of a 16-year-old girl who is not only an extraordinary athlete, but also something altogether more profound and worthy of celebration: an uncommon human being.
“She is a very loving person,” says her coach, Liang Chow. “That shows in her gymnastics.”
To imagine that Johnson could ever blame her captain for preventing her from being the Michael Phelps of women’s gymnastics is not to understand who she is. Before today, it was by no means inconceivable that Johnson could have won four golds: in the team event, the all-around, and the floor and beam individual events.
But she knows, as does the entire team, that without Sacramone, they would not have won the world championship last year. After a shaky rotation on beam then, Sacramone gathered the team together – in a huddle as gymnasts often do – but this time, very clearly under her wing. On that day, the floor event was flawless and America was world champions.
Today, the result was different. Johnson was not.
“We love her no matter what,” she says.
These sorts of things are said every day at the Olympic Games. Often they are honest, sometimes they are not. With Johnson, there is no doubting.
Much has been made of the age of the Chinese gymnasts. We know Shawn Johnson is 16. But she is so much older than that, too.
At a pre-Olympics press gathering in Houston, she is one of the girls. There is chatter about her upcoming high school prom, and the dress she will wear. Yet there is something in her answers, something in the calmness so obviously apparent – either on the beam or in front of a microphone – that seems almost like wisdom.
Upon arriving in Beijing, she is asked her impressions. At the beginning of perhaps the greatest moment in her athletic life, her thoughts turn not to herself – to fear or excitement – but to her coach, who is from Beijing.
“It was really cool to be in Beijing airport and to hear him speak Chinese,” she says, beaming.
What she says next, she says with such earnestness it makes the heart melt: “It means I worked hard enough to get him back to his hometown.”
When Chow hears her say something like this, which she does often, his face softens, no longer the coach. In Houston, he needed a moment to compose himself. “When she says that, it makes me emotional,” he said. “She’s such a sweetheart.”
That she is even here in Beijing is a testament to her uniqueness. While many of her teammates have fathers and mothers as coaches, pushing them, she has parents that, at times, have sought to hold her back, not wanting their daughter to be warped by pressures that they cannot even imagine.
But there is an inner iron in their girl more often associated with swimmers and basketball players so muscle-bound that they could lift her like a barbell. “She is a very strong person, both physically and mentally,” says Chow.
And there is no doubting how she became so. At the first gymnastics press conference in Beijing, she explains what excites her about being here.
“It is great to be here with all these athletes who work so hard.”
She explains what it is like having Nastia Liukin, perhaps the world’s second-best gymnast and her top competition in the all-around, on the same team.
“It makes me motivated to go home and work ever harder.”
Chow explains how she behaves in practice.
“She just wants to get her work done – boom, boom, boom,” he laughs.
For other athletes, it could sound like something you might read on an inspirational framed picture: WORK ETHIC. Pat. Boilerplate. With Johnson, she is the picture itself, every automatic routine evidence of what hard work can accomplish.
There is something almost inconceivable in this – a 16 year old with such determination, all of it her own. And yet, alongside a hunger that most often seems linked to a chest-thumping, self-promoting bravado – that seems inextricable from it – there is the girl who sat beside her captain, speaking words of comfort and love in the moment when they were surely most desperately needed.
She was the mother, taking a loved one under her arm.
“She’s got a good little soul,” her mother, Teri, told Sports Illustrated.
No matter what her performance in the individual all-around Friday, perhaps nothing at these Games will be more precious than that one moment, when we all caught a glimpse of a young woman whose gifts stretch well beyond the world of sport.
