Chinese sports fans and status-hungry leaders coming to terms with the fact that Rio 2016 is unlikely to bring medal haul they had hoped for

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

When China’s athletes flew down to Rio ahead of the 2016 Olympics they came in search of gold – and lots of it.



“China expects 30-36 golds,” boasted the front page headline in the Global Times, a tub-thumping Communist party controlled tabloid, as the first Games to be held in South America kicked off on 5 August.

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But less than a fortnight later those expectations are being downgraded as Chinese sports fans and their soft-power obsessed leaders come to terms with the fact that the Rio Games are unlikely to bear the fruits they had hoped for.

China has struggled to replicate its triumphs at the Beijing and London Olympics of 2008 and 2012. At the end of day 10, despite stunning successes in disciplines including diving and weightlifting, Team China lay in third place in the medals table.

That placed it not only behind the United States but also trailing historic foe Great Britain, with Team GB’s athletes having won 16 gold medals to China’s 15.

“You kidding me?” the official English language Twitter account of Xinhua, China’s government-controlled news agency, sulked on Tuesday alongside a photograph of the unwelcome ranking. “The country which has never finished above China is about to.”

Team China (@XHSports) You kidding me? The country which has never finished above China is about to... pic.twitter.com/ejyIuwFoZ9

Chinese internet users expressed a mix of nonchalance and sour grapes at the country’s fortunes in Brazil.

“It doesn’t matter how many gold medals we have, as long as all the athletes can come home safely,” one fan wrote on Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter.

Another disenchanted commentator captured growing frustration among Chinese sports addicts. “Rubbish Rio!” they grumbled. “Rubbish judges!”

Team China’s below-par performance has seen the country’s state-controlled media change its tune over the Games, from a high-adrenaline samba to a wistful bossa nova.

“It will be hard for China to get more than 25 gold medals at this Olympics which would be the lowest number in the last five,” journalist Yang Dawei conceded in an article in north-east China’s Dalian Daily newspaper.

After China failed to win a single gold on day one of the Olympics, the usually bombastic Global Times offered a more measured appraisal of the country’s chances.

“Public relax over medal tally,” read the headline of a front page story which praised the public’s “remarkable tolerance to their national team’s gold medal drought”.

He Wenyi, a Peking University sports expert, told the newspaper that as China had “grown from a backward country to become the world’s second largest economy, its people no longer need to use sporting prowess as a means to boost national confidence”.

“A gold medal at the Games is not as lustrous as before for the Chinese people,” the academic was quoted as saying.

The Communist party’s official mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, has also sought to lower expectations, with one correspondent blaming injuries, ageing athletes and poor individual performances for Team China’s inability, so far, to match its past glories.

State broadcaster CCTV has used its rolling coverage of the Games to emphasise that it is the taking part, not the winning, that counts.



On Monday evening it ran a lengthy report highlighting the stories of the Brazilian badminton player Ygor Coelho de Oliveira and the Ethiopian swimmer Robel Kiros Habte, two athletes who have become crowd favourites in Rio despite standing no chance of striking gold.

“This is another charm of the Olympics: [they are] heroes even without the crown,” sports presenter Chen Huaijie told viewers.



China’s Olympics has been far from a disaster. The country’s 416 athletes have produced some spectacular, world-beating performances to so far claim a total of 46 medals, including 15 gold, 14 silver and 17 bronze.

“We don’t even think about the gold. Gold is for China,” Italian diver Tania Cagnotto admitted after picking up the silver medal in the synchroniaed 3m springboard against Chinese champions Shi Tingmao and Wu Minxia.

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Mark Dreyer, a Beijing-based sports writer who edits the China Sports Insider website, said the scale of Team China’s disappointment should not be exaggerated.

“They’ve definitely under-performed. But it hasn’t been terrible,” he said. “They’ve got to be looking at about 25 at this point. Even if it’s not 35 [golds], it’s still pretty decent.”

Dreyer admitted China’s plight was causing some anxiety and hand-wringing back home – despite state media’s claims to the contrary. “It is one thing to say, ‘Hey, let’s not worry about the golds,’ but of course you still want to do as well as possible.”

But he claimed China’s fewer-than-expected golds reflected a positive trend in Chinese sports whereby athletics was undergoing a transition away from “manufactured Olympic champions” from the state-run sports system who were effective at bringing home medals but had cardboard personalities and inspired little devotion among fans.

Mao Zhixiong, a sports expert from the Beijing University of Sports, agreed China’s notorious all-or-nothing gold fever was fading.

The Chinese government was becoming more “open and relaxed” about the idea that the country’s power was not necessarily reflected by the number of the gold medals it won.

“We still need to use sporting prowess as a means to boost national confidence and show national strength,” Mao said. “But we are becoming more and more rational.”

Additional reporting by Christy Yao