In Rio de Janeiro, the Chinese weightlifting team has dominated the competition, topping the medal table with 5 golds and 2 silvers and setting four world records. But few viewers will have noticed China had another winner behind the scenes: Zhangkong, a Chinese company that clinched the bid to be the sole supplier of barbells and weights for the Rio Games, and has seen its orders soar as a result.

The company’s owner, Zhang Zhiguo, traveled to Rio to witness his equipment being hoisted up himself. He told Sixth Tone by phone that it was the first time for the company to supply a tournament outside of Asia. Zhang and the company’s technical team have traveled to Brazil to check that everything goes smoothly with the 16,650 kilograms’ worth of equipment they shipped across the Pacific in April.

Zhangkong beat out industry heavyweights Eleiko, from Sweden, which supplied the London Olympics, and Uesaka from Japan, which had won the Olympic bids from 1988 to 2004. Neither company replied to requests for comment.

The International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) chose Zhangkong once before, for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, suggesting the company enjoyed an advantage on its home turf. “As long as the products meet the standards, there is no way they would choose foreign products,” Zhang explained.

This year, Zhangkong had another opportunity because there are no certified barbell manufacturers in South America. The IWF invited companies bidding for the Olympic contract to donate funds to support the development of weightlifting in poorer countries. Zhongkang won the bid by contributing $1 million in sponsorship. The Rio contract is worth $860,000, but Zhangkong earned much more in sales to competing nations who wanted to use the same equipment for practice. Before the Olympics, the company exported to 40 countries, but by now it has received orders from 136 countries.

Zhangkong, founded in 1982 by Zhang’s father, started as a small workshop in the countryside of Hebei province, a five-hour drive from Beijing in northern China. Zhang’s father had heard there was a gap to be filled in the market. A friend in the sports sector had told him that they had to wait up to half a year for weights, even after paying up front. Owing to the planned economy, which only recently had started to be phased out, only two state-owned companies had the required skills and technology to produce barbells.

Business was rough, however. When the younger Zhang took over in 1993, the family factory was heavily in debt. Zhang remembers the hard sell of the early days. “I took the remaining 1,000 yuan ($150 at the current rate) and visited every weight training facility in Fujian, Anhui, and Jiangxi provinces to try to sell our products,” Zhang said. He had to sleep in train stations while on sales trips because he couldn’t afford a hotel room.

Slowly, the company built up its manufacturing capacity and name recognition. These days, Zhangkong is one of only five companies certified by the IWF to produce weights at a world standard. Every year, the company’s 40 workers manufacture more than 10,000 sets of barbells.

Though Chinese manufacturing has built a high profile worldwide, it’s hard to shake the association with low quality. On Aug. 12, the New York Times said some players disparaged the table tennis balls made by Chinese brand Double Happiness as “subpar.” Li Ping, a Chinese national playing for Qatar at the games, initially criticized the balls’ quality before later saying he had been misquoted.

While in Rio, Zhang closely watched every event in which the Chinese team participated, his pride growing each time he saw the nation’s strongest step onto the medal podium. It was quite a feeling, he said, to see the national flag and hear the national anthem so far from home.

(Header image: A weightlifter competes during Final - Men’s +105kg of Rio Olympics, Brazil, Aug. 16, 2016. Damir Sagolj/Reuters)