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Torture or training? Inside the brutal Chinese gymnasium where the country's future Olympic stars are beaten into shape

• Nanning Gymnasium in Nanning, China, is one of many ruthless training camps in China
  
• Here children, some as young as five, battle to complete the demanding routines on bars, rings, and mats
  

Her face etched with pain, a child trains for Olympic glory while her gymnastics trainer stands on her legs.
The cartoon space rockets and animal astronauts on her tiny red leotard are a stark and powerful reminder of this little girl's tender age as she trains as hard as any adult athlete in the Western world.
Nanning Gymnasium in Nanning, China, is one of many ruthless training camps across the country to which parents send their children to learn how to be champions.

But while training techniques appear extreme to Western eyes, they provide an insight into why China's athletes at London 2012 seem so easily able to swim, dive, lift and shoot their way to victory.

Gymnastic stars are known for starting at an incredibly early age, and this group of children appear no different as they battled to complete the demanding routines on bars, rings, and mats.

Boys and girls who looked no older than five or six-years-old were tasked with swinging on beams, hanging from pairs of rings and bounding across floor mats during the physically strenuous training sessions.



The youngsters at the same training school will be hoping to emulate the success of 16-year-old swimming sensation Ye Shewin, who glided into the record books on Saturday night.

Only last January harrowing photographs were posted on the internet showing Chinese children crying in pain as they were put to work.

In case they had forgotten why they were there, a large sign on the wall reminded them. ‘GOLD’ it said simply.

Charges are often taught by rote that their mission in life is to beat the Americans and all-comers to the top of the podium.








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I'm pretty sure that the article is a joke.

Spartacus, post: 70725, member: 1060 Wrote:Charges are often taught by rote that their mission in life is to beat the Americans and all-comers to the top of the podium.

WUT?

Little Big Dreams
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00cwjkc

Great documentary on how these children are trained from young. Not available on youtube, but you know where you can get it.

It's not joke, I also read this article in a newspaper and that's a damn hard practice they force them into...

For me this is just abuse, nothing else. If they want a golden medal at the Olympics that bad, they should get it themselves. They shouldn't force their children because they were failed athletes.

A lot of these children/teenagers get taken away from their homes to go train in a government institutes, permanently. I read an article about a girl who left her home at 16. Now she's 26, and she didn't even know her grandparents died and that her mother had cancer. State property.

George Of The Jungle, post: 70744, member: 3094 Wrote:For me this is just abuse, nothing else. If they want a golden medal at the Olympics that bad, they should get it themselves. They shouldn't force their children because they were failed athletes.

A lot of these children/teenagers get taken away from their homes to go train in a government institutes, permanently. I read an article about a girl who left her home at 16. Now she's 26, and she didn't even know her grandparents died and that her mother had cancer. State property.

+1

Even if it's brutal and ruthless, we can't deny that it's pretty damn effective at producing gold medals.

Myeah, but I think the US has done good enough the last few decades, without that structure.

Other than draconian discipline that is common in mainland Chinese culture, another possible reason that they resort to such extreme methods to produce athletes is that athleticism is not as rewarded in China as it is in the United States. In the United States, athleticism can give you far more success than a job in a top paying field like medicine. Asian cultures have traditionally placed higher value on intellectual and occupational pursuits as opposed to sports, so there is less incentive for people to train to become athletes by their own choice.

All Heil Glorious lin3ar, who always comments the right words.
but nobody will know what draconian is...
say it in simpler, more ignoble words, like...
martinet? maybe?
ok ill stop now.
go Korea go!
omg im gonna get hated so bad now...