Another reason to eschew the Olympics. (HT: Wintery Knight)
Winning at all costs: Children are put through their paces doing punishing exercises to toughen them up
Children are trained at camps where the word ‘gold’ is hung on the wall to make them focus on success
Sweat and tears: A young girl is pushed through a tough gymnastics exercise
For during recent years its swimmers and coaches have been caught cheating so many times it is difficult to keep count – and it has modelled its draconian training system on precisely that which produced Schneider and other turbo-charged East Germans before the Iron Curtain fell.
It began in the Eighties when, determined to end the nation’s perennial humiliation at major athletics and swimming championships, China’s Communist regime decreed that a generation of future champions must be harvested and honed.
To that end, school teachers were ordered to scrutinise their pupils for signs of natural sporting ability and report any child with obvious potential to regional coaches who would install them in one of 3,000 new state training camps.
