Beijing Olympic Games

Gymnastics-China’s Cheng bids for golden treble

By Ian Ransom

BEIJING, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Having beaten the world and a personal battle with weight, China’s baby-faced vaulter Cheng Fei is striving for three perfect landings on the winner’s podium in Beijing.

The pint-sized 20-year-old is rated a strong contender to take her first Olympic gold in the vault, an exercise she has made her own since unveiling her signature manoeuvre, “The Cheng”, at the 2005 world championships in Melbourne.

The manoeuvre, a round-off half-turn on to the vault followed by a 540-degree forward flip, set the gymnastics world alight and propelled Cheng to back-to-back world titles in 2005 and 2006.

It also became a serious problem for Cheng in the first half of 2007, a period in which the gymnast battled with weight and confidence issues.

Tired and flat after nearly two years at the top, Cheng found herself struggling to land her own manoeuvre, even as other athletes began performing it with aplomb.

But a diet of fruit and water helped her clinch her third world championship gold at Stuttgart last September and set her back on the path to glory in front of home fans in Beijing.

“The Beijing Olympics is an opportunity once in a hundred years. But when I am in the competition, I will think of it as nothing more than an ordinary competition,” Cheng told Chinese media.

With China standing a good chance of taking team gold, Cheng will also face arch-rival and world champion Shawn Johnson of the United States in a battle for the floor title.

Cheng, who at 16 was disappointed to come fourth in the floor exercise at the 2004 Athens Games, will also be keen to erase the memories of her final day at Stuttgart, where a rare stumble outside the area gifted Johnson gold.

Raised in Huangshi, a small town in the heartland province of Hubei, Cheng was fed into the country’s state-run sport system as a five-year-old.

Unlike her team mates, she would eschew shopping excursions for snacks and dresses during rare breaks from the rigours of training, preferring to stay in the gymnasium to hone her craft.

WORK ETHIC

The unflinching work ethic helped Cheng lead China to team gold at the 2006 worlds and clinch individual titles for the vault and floor exercise.

“The young generation of Chinese gymnasts are really capable, with very high starting scores on degree of difficulties, but it is also a risk,” Mo Huilan, the only Chinese female to win an Olympic vault medal, a silver in Atlanta, told Reuters on Tuesday.

“The gymnastics is all about on-site performance, so their biggest rivals will not be the Americans, but themselves,” Mo said.

Shrugging off the Chinese women’s surprise failure to win team gold at last year’s worlds, Cheng said she and her team mates would relish the pressure of competition.

“Competing on home soil will surely be an advantage. No matter where I compete, I will keep a calm mood to reduce mistakes and bring out my abilities,” Cheng said.

(Additional reporting by Liu Zhen; Editing by Ed Osmond)

(For more stories visit our multimedia website “Road to Beijing” at http://www.reuters.com/news/sports/2008olympics; and see our blog at http://blogs.reuters.com/china)

WITNESS-Olympics-Love or hate them, openings are pure kitsch

By Paul Majendie

BEIJING, Aug 3 (Reuters) - I have never laughed so much in my life. It was so over the top, pure Hollywood.

Eighty-four pianists in white tie and tails launched into Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” on 84 pianos. A jet-propelled “Rocket Man” soared into the stadium to whoops from the crowd.

The opening ceremony at Los Angeles in 1984 was unalloyed showbiz. In the next five Games, organisers preferred a less flamboyant palette of nationalistic fervour, folklore and historical pageants.

Californian flower girls handed out bouquets in LA because, as the oleaginous TV commentator explained, they wanted to “ensure this is a person to person moment”.

Pure kitsch. Fervent national pride. Cheesy dance routines. An interminable parade of athletes. Stodgy official speeches.

I have, for my sins, covered every opening ceremony since then and there has been a great deal of all the above. They seem to get longer every time but I have become an unashamed addict.

Admittedly, spectators are often force-fed a diet of anodyne bonhomie but the showstopping moments stay in the mind forever.

At the Seoul Summer Games, the South Korean crowd went crazy when 76-year-old Sohn Kee-Chung, winner of the 1936 marathon, carried the torch into the stadium.

He had been forced to enter that marathon using a Japanese name because Korea was then occupied by Japan.

But cynics may recall Seoul as the year of the burnt doves.

Several of the birds—traditional symbols of peace—met an untimely end while sitting on the edge of the Olympic cauldron for the lighting of the flame.

The flame-lighting is the climax of the show and organisers work long and hard in secrecy searching for the wow factor.

In Barcelona in 1992, Paralympic archer Antonio Rebollo lit the Olympic flame by firing a blazing arrow into the cauldron.

But the gold medal for pure emotion would have to go to Atlanta in 1996.

Appearing from the shadows, Muhammad Ali walked slowly forward to take the Olympic flame from swimmer Janet Evans.

Ali, ravaged by Parkinson’s Syndrome and a pale shadow of the boxing genius who once could “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee,” shuffled up to kindle the flame, his hands shaking and his face gripped in concentration.

President Bill Clinton’s eyes were glistening with tears. It certainly had me sobbing.

To cries of “G’Day” to the world, Sydney went for an army of lawnmowers and a giant pink jellyfish. A lone horseman led a cavalry charge of 120 stockmen in a flamboyant opening flourish.

Then, in a gesture of national reconciliation, Aborigine runner Cathy Freeman was picked to light the flame, creating a ring of fire in the heart of a cascading waterfall.

But she and the 110,000-strong crowd held their breath as the eight-tonne steel bowl of flame shuddered and snagged at the start of its journey up the side of Stadium Australia.

Engineers fixed the fault in just three minutes that must have felt like a lifetime for the organisers.

After all the doomsday warnings about Athens not being ready in time, the Greek capital launched the 2004 Olympics in its ancient birthplace with an acclaimed spectacular.

The stadium floor was flooded with water, creating a shimmering sea that burst into flames as the five Olympic rings were set ablaze by a pyrotechnic comet flashing down from the sky. It looked superb.

And then, as in every Summer Games, the opening ceremony almost ground to a halt to welcome the people who really matter — even if at times it seemed every athlete on earth was parading through the stadium.

Then come the obligatory pyrotechnics. Fireworks always look more spectacular live than they do on television.

Heading for my seventh and final Olympics, I must say I cannot wait to see what the Chinese will come up with.

(Editing by Robert Woodward and Greg Stutchbury)

(For more stories visit our multimedia website “Road to Beijing” at http://www.reuters.com/news/sports/2008olympics; and see our blog at http://blogs.reuters.com/china)

ADVISORY-Witness story on Olympic openings

Paul Majendie is a correspondent based in the London Bureau who joined Reuters in 1970. He first went to the summer Olympics at Los Angeles in 1984 and has covered every opening ceremony since then—in Seoul, Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney and Athens.

Reluctant Xie says this is last chance

By Liu Zhen

BEIJING, Aug 3 (Reuters) - China’s Xie Xingfang was always a reluctant badminton player but presented with the chance to win an Olympic title on home soil, she is not going to waste her golden opportunity.

The 27-year-old world number one, one half of China’s most famous sporting couple along with top ranked men’s singles player Lin Dan, is hot favourite to wrest the Olympic crown away from compatriot and defending champion Zhang Ning.

Beijing will be Xie’s first Olympics—because of China’s great strength in depth she was left out of the team for Athens as she was then ranked only fourth in China—and is also likely to be her last.

“My goal is clear and simple, the gold medal in the women’s singles,” she recently told local media. “I know it is my last chance.”

Xie was not always so motivated. When she was picked up by a Guangzhou city sports school coach at the age of 7, she showed little interest in badminton and skipped all the morning training sessions.

But her talent easily made Xie one of China’s top prospects. After winning the doubles title at the world juniors with Zhang Jiewen in 1998, she was selected for the national team by coach Li Yongbo, who at once switched her to singles.

Feeling the pressure and lacking confidence, it took years for the long-time doubles player to get her first singles title at the Indonesian Open in 2003. In 2005 and 2006 she won the world titles.

“CONDOR COUPLE”

The shuttler first met her boyfriend, men’s world number one Lin Dan, at the age of 16 at a training base in Fujian.

Their relationship was first made public in 2004 at the All England Open. Lin’s red roses and congratulatory kiss when Xie won the 2007 All Englands made the romance known around the world.

China’s badminton team is comparatively tolerant of relationships between players and they were not punished as they would have been in the table tennis team, for example.

Xie said their relationship helped them during the dark days of the Athens Olympics when Xie was left out of the team and Lin was knocked out in the first round.

“I thought she might not be able to go on until 2008,” Lin said. “It took great courage and motivation for her to make it.”

Xie regained her confidence by winning six major titles in a row to become world number one in April 2005.

“I can share my pressure with him,” she said of Lin. “He is the kind of person that exerts himself to the utmost. After watching him play, I have become a bit more aggressive.”

Xie and Lin won the women’s and men’s singles titles at the 2006 world championships in Madrid as well as the 2006 and 2007 All England Open.

The pair are known as the “Condor Couple”, a nickname which has its origins in a novel by Louis Cha. The book describes the adventures of an impetuous young warrior and his calm, elder lover.

“After the Olympics I can finally live the life I really want to with holidays, studying and marriage … I am really looking forward to it,” said Xie.

“I just want to be the woman who cooks soup for Dan after the Games,” she said.

(Additional reporting by Nick Mulvenney; editing by Jeremy Laurence)

(For more stories visit our multimedia website “Road to Beijing” at http://www.reuters.com/news/sports/2008olympics; and see our blog at http://blogs.reuters.com/china)