Xu Haifeng
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Xu Haifeng: China' s 1st Olympic champion
Zhao Guorui said, "Xu Haifeng has his own characteristics. You can say he was a late bloomer in shooting and was very gifted." XuHaifeng said, "Sport is a special profession, different from any other ones. It is an honor to be an athlete. So far, only in sports can you hear your national anthem played and see your national flag raised in honor of your accomplishments." From shooting birds with a sling as a child to winning the Olympic gold, XuHaifeng has always been an ambitious sharpshooter. As a new athlete, and only had been trained with the national team for about two years, Xu became the first person to break China's "zero record" in Olympic gold medals during the 1984 Olympic games in shooting. XuHaifeng said, "Winning the first gold medal and breaking through the zero record was because the event was scheduled earlier than others. I think it was just an opportunity. And I feel I was lucky that my event was on the first day and was the first competition. " Zhao Guorui said, When China first took part in the Olympics, mentally we did not have a lot of pressure. As long as we won one gold medal, we were satisfied. It was an advantage that our athletes had little pressure psychologically and could focus on the games. XuHaifeng said, "I was very serious and devoted during training. I studied this event during my spare time to discover key elements to do it well. I applied my discovery to my training and performed steadily at the competition." But in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Xu faltered and scored the lowest point in his professional shooting career. XuHaifeng said, “I was over confident and did not prepare very well. If I had been more serious and better prepared, the gold medal should still be mine." Zhao Guorui said, "After the qualification competition, Xu was supposed to rest and keep his mind clear before the finals. But at the time, some people from the sports committee surrounded XuHaifeng to chat with him. I should have taken him away from the distraction. When the finals began, Xu didn’t have adequate time to focus and with already having high expectation for himself, he lost the competition." XuHaifeng said, "I learned from my mistake and when I became a coach, I made my athletes rest well before each competition. I would give them guidance to help them stay focused on the games." Being called as a golden athlete and golden coach is no coincidence,Xu later became a coach for the Chinese National Shooting Team, and has successfully led his athletes to several gold medals at Olympic events and produced many world champions. XuHaifeng said, "It was not because I taught well, but due to my different teaching ideas from the other coaches, I would provoke their creativity. Athletes on the national team are good enough and I don’t need to teach them about skills necessarily. But during training, I would apply methods that would make them compete with each other and learn from each other. This way, their levels would be improved gradually."
Xu Haifeng, from fertilizer salesman to national hero
With 60 shots heard around the sporting world, former fertilizer salesman Xu Haifeng took his place in Olympic history and became a Chinese national hero. As every Chinese schoolchild will tell you, Xu's victory in the 50 meter free pistol shooting final at the 1984 Los Angeles Games earned the world's most populous nation its first Olympic gold medal. By claiming the first gold of the Games, Xu ensured China made an immediate impact on its return to the Summer Olympics after the 32-year absence caused by the controversy over the recognition of Taiwan. Yet just over two years before his triumph, Xu was selling fertilizer in one of China's poorer provinces, had just a week's shooting experience and had not picked up a gun in a decade. "I started shooting very late," Xu told Reuters. "I graduated from high school in 1974 and was sent to the country (to farm) for four and a half years. In 1979 I was employed as a salesman by a country shop in Anhui. "I sold many things -- cigarettes, sugar, wine, nails ... and finally chemical fertilizer." Xu thinks he may have inherited his sometime soldier father's love of guns and, like most Chinese boys, had messed around with catapults growing up in southeast Fujian Province. "In June 1982, I heard my former high school teacher was coaching the municipal shooting team and as I was very fond of shooting, I asked him to let me have a go," added Xu, now 51. "We had had one week of military training before we graduated from high school. It was the first time I had used a real gun and I finished number one in the school." PROVINCIAL CHAMPION Within two months of taking up the sport, Xu was a provincial champion and in March 1983 he won his first national title, an achievement that won him a place in the national shooting team and in November 1983 the Olympic trials. "There were six of us and I was very much the rookie," Xu recalled. "So I never thought I'd make it to the Olympics. But unexpectedly I got through all the trials and was chosen." Despite going along "just to take part", after more than two hours of his event in Los Angeles, it came down to four competitors. "I did very well until the last 10 shots," he said. "The spectators around me affected my concentration. I knew how many I'd got but nothing about the others' results. But the gathering crowd hinted that I had done well. "I sat down and took a short break. Finally, I got two nines and one 10 in my last three shots." In the days before electronic scoring the targets had to be checked and the scores calculated by officials. "It took half an hour," Xu said. "I waited and then finally the referee told me, 'You have won. Please go and get your medal'. "I felt suddenly relaxed, just like a huge stone hanging upon my heart had been removed." The reaction from his team mates and officials was euphoric, but that still did not prepare him for his reception back home. "When I got back with a gold, I realized how significant it would be, it changed my life ever after," he said. "The great passion of the people was unbearable after I returned. Huge crowds welcomed me everywhere. I couldn't eat or sleep properly. Meetings or celebrations lasted until midnight every day and early the next morning, I was woken up again. "For about 20 days, I went to every place I'd ever been, from the sports administrations to the fertilizer shop, to say thanks to everybody."
Farewell Medal Mania, Hello Sports Reform
Chinese sports fans following the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro have noticed something different about the latest generation of Olympians representing their country: Today's young athletes are a lot less inclined to cry if they fail to win a gold medal. That may explain why 20-year-old swimmer Fu Yuanhui was vivacious and humorous on live TV after winning a bronze medal, not the hoped-for gold, for her showing in a 100-meter backstroke competition. And it may explain why acclaimed swimmer Ning Zetao appeared calm after failing to qualify to compete for a medal. Unlike their predecessors at past Olympics, less-than-perfect Chinese athletes at the Rio Games are neither shedding tears nor apologizing for letting the country down. It's a whole new ball game: China has replaced a form of gold-medal worship with true appreciation for athletic endeavors and achievement. Winning gold medals was once a national obsession. Under the state-backed system for Olympic athlete development, winning meant everything. No matter how diligent, an athlete who lost a competition could face social condemnation. The pursuit of victory had nothing to do with an athlete as an individual and everything to do with following government orders. Xu Haifeng, China's first Olympic gold-medal sharpshooter, described the obsession this way: "Winning gold medals is what society needs." Times have changed along with Chinese perceptions of athletes and sporting itself. An Olympic athlete is no longer seen as a model citizen on a political mission who is expected to carry the pride of an entire nation on his or her shoulders. Rather, each is an individual making a personal contribution to the games. Team China members at Rio are obviously enjoying this new perception – and personal identity. The spirit of athletic competition is still strong. But rather than worshipping gold medals, China has shown at the Rio Olympics that its primary interest is genuine sportsmanship. Government policymakers have responded to this changing atmosphere. Guidelines for cutting red tape in the sports industry were issued in 2014 by the State Council, China's cabinet. The guidelines were aimed at boosting the country's sports industry through market-oriented reforms. And under the 13th Five-Year Plan for sports development, which took effect this year, government regulators overseeing the sector are required to adopt modern governance approaches. The road to sporting reform has been long. The effort first appeared on the State Council's agenda in 1998. But special interests that benefited from the traditional system stood in the way of reform. As a result, at least for a while, little heed was given to calls for change. A key issue has been how to sharpen the blurry lines that traditionally separated government and commercial interests, against the backdrop of government market intervention behavior and state monopolization of sporting resources through the state-controlled athlete training system. Quasi-government administrators such as the Chinese Football Association and Chinese Basketball Association, for example, have been embroiled in controversies over business operations. Athletes and the government agency that supervises the Olympics training program have clashed over advertising contracts in which athletes endorse products, qualifications for participating in the Olympics, and other issues. Even more serious was that gold-medal worship created opportunities for graft. A 2015 General Administration of Sport investigation found some administration officials had guided the Olympic athlete training program to pursue gold medals for economic gain. Now that China is getting over its obsession with gold medals, it's time to further advance sports system reform. All reforms should be implemented according to the State Council's guidelines and its call for respecting basic principles of sportsmanship. No longer should personal interests and privileges be pursued in the name of gold medals or any sort of Olympics victory, for doing so can be a stumbling block to the nation's sports industry development. Government agencies that oversee sporting and Olympic training must now adjust their functions to match the latest reform agenda and support sports development. They should help protect the rights of athletes and clubs, promote sports-related businesses, clear away policy barriers and cultivate a consumer market for sports. Authorities should build a system that benefits sports fans as well as athletics as a whole in China. China can learn from other countries. The United States, for example, has no single government agency overseeing its sports industry. Instead, more than 300 non-governmental sports organizations coordinate their efforts. Valuable sports industry lessons can also be found in Japan and South Korea, whose cultural and economic development routes have been similar to China's. In Rio, China's athletes have been giving their all. Their impressive accomplishments may offer further ideas for reforming the nation's sports system. If this year's Olympics are a true catalyst for accelerating reform, the young members of today's Team China will be remembered for a lot more than medals.
Knowledge Graph
Examples
1 After a long interval, in 1984, again at the Los Angeles Olympic Games, Chinese shooter Xu Haifeng set the record as the first ever Chinese Olympic gold medalist.
2 On the first day of competition on 29 July, Xi Haifeng (1957–), won the men’s 50-m pistol competition.
3 Xu Haifeng was born in August1,1957,in Fujian Province,China.