(AFP) – Aug 18, 2008

BEIJING (AFP) — With plenty of cash and an infusion of foreign coaches, China's old communist-inspired sporting machine has undergone a major upgrade in recent years that has driven it to its historic Olympic success.

Many controversial methods remain -- children spend years away from their parents in training camps, discipline breaches are not tolerated and athletes who do not achieve glory for the motherland are often ejected and forgotten.

However, China's sports chiefs have shown a willingness in the long build-up to the 2008 Olympics to embrace more modern ideas, which has been one key factor in the nation already winning more gold in Beijing than any other Games.

"I have worked a lot to get the women to have fun," said Frenchman Christian Bauer, who has been in charge of China's sabre fencing team since 2006.

"For them, fencing was a kind of a job. It was not a passion."

With Bauer's help, China achieved only its second Olympic fencing gold when Zhong Man won the men's individual sabre event.

Bauer received warm plaudits for helping in the success but, giving an insight into the steely determination behind China's sporting rise, he said silver for the women's sabre team was seen as a failure.

"When I saw the people responsible at the federation after we won silver, they didn't even congratulate me. They care only about gold," he said.

Now that it can afford to pay decent salaries, China has attracted a legion of foreign coaches like Bauer in recent years.

Lithuanian Jonas Kazlauskas has been entrusted to look after perhaps China's most precious sporting commodity, Yao Ming, and the rest of the national men's basketball team, which has made the quarter-finals in Beijing.

Meanwhile, Australian Tom Maher is in charge of the women's team, after guiding his native country to silver at the 2000 Sydney Games.

In an interview with AFP before the Games, Maher said one of his top priorities was to change the mentality among Chinese sporting chiefs that training harder was better.

"The logic here is: if two hours training is good, four must be better. If you can do eight hours, then 12 is better still," said Maher, who was appointed in 2005.

"Going on 10,000m training runs doesn't make you a better basketball player."

A record 38 foreign coaches are involved with Chinese teams or athletes in Beijing, the deputy head of China's Olympic team, Cui Dalin, said on the weekend, describing them as "significant elements" in the nation's success.

"Their advanced training methods and new concepts helped the Chinese athletes improve their performances at the Olympics," he said.

As well as bringing foreign coaches in, China has shown a new-found willingness to send its athletes abroad.

After a three-month stint in Australia under the guidance of well-respected coach Denis Cotterell, Zhang Lin stormed to the 400m freestyle silver medal on Sunday for the best Olympic swim by a Chinese male in 12 years.

In heading Down Under, the 20-year-old was one of the first Chinese swimmers allowed to train outside of China.

More sensationally, a leading coach in Australia told the press there that he sold the secret training methods of his protege to Liu Zige, the Chinese swimmer who beat her for gold in the 200m butterfly in Beijing.

Ken Wood said he had been paid "big money" to give away the secrets to how he transformed Jessica Schipper into a world-record breaking swimmer.

The previously unknown Liu came out of nowhere to win gold in the event here and shatter Schipper's world record by 1.22 seconds in the process, leaving the Australian a distant third.

"They (Chinese coaches) pay for the programmes," Wood was quoted as saying. "They pay good money, big money. I wouldn't help them for nothing."

That money has paid big dividends with China on track to becoming only the third country since World War II -- after the United States and the former Soviet Union -- to top the end-of-Games medal table

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »