Michael Phelps comes to the pool-side without fuss. If there are airs and
graces, he leaves them in the changing room. It is the final heat of the
400m individual medley on the first day of Olympic competition and he stands
on the fourth block, remarkably tranquil for a man also standing at the door
of history. Eight gold medals he seeks in Beijing, enough metal to drag a
lesser man to the bottom of the ocean.
We kidded you that Ian Thorpe was a freak, the like of which we had never
seen. We hurt only ourselves because when the real freak came along, there
was precious little we could say. Except that with his barn-door shoulders
and short legs, Phelpsis something else. He doesn’t think about eight gold
medals but concentrates instead on what he’s got to do. Train, breakfast,
train, lunch, nap, train, evening meal, sleep. Simple chap. In the prerace
room he watched the heats before his and, like an animal of prey, he saw a
weakness. Nobody had swum fast, so Phelps exploded off the blocks, swam the
first 150m inside world record pace and though he eased down, still set an
Olympic record. It was his way of telling his rivals: “Guys, don’t even
think about it.”
And this 400m medley was supposed to be one of his tougher events. He stopped
on his way out of the arena to say he hadn’t expected to be that fast in the
heat. Translated, that means he will be faster in today’s final. Although
Ryan Lochte talked about staying with Phelps and putting him under pressure,
it seemed just that, talk.
Phelps’s journey will be tough but it will be fun to follow because his talent
for the water is extraordinary and it is right that his gifts illuminate the
Beijing Games. The organis-ers of the XXIX Olympiad deserve Michael Phelps;
he, in turn, has found a magnificent stage for what will probably be his
greatest performance. To describe the scope of the Chinese achievement is a
Phelp-sian challenge, but it is told in the conversations of Olympic
veterans who agree they have seen nothing like Beijing. Nothing on this
scale and no organisations with so much passion and enthusiasm. There are
thousands of volunteers and there isn’t one who will tell you the way to the
station/bus depot/toilet, each one shows you the way.
That’s the human side. The technology is from another world, the
infrastructure so brilliantly designed, it feels as if there are no security
checks. There has never been a Games like it and it is unlikely there will
be in future. What other government could or would sanction the funding that
has underpinned the transformation of a city and the provision of
breathtaking stadiums?
“In China,” says Professor Mei Renyi of Beijing’s Foreign Studies University,
“it is customary to do everything as well as you can when you invite people
to your home and it is normal that the guests say the food is delicious,
even if they don’t think it is. There will be frustration as well because we
want our visitors to say how good everything is but, of course, there will
be some criticism. The rebuilding of affected areas after the earthquake in
Sichuan province last May and the hosting of the Olympics has shown us we
can overcome difficulties. In the future we will be able to listen to and
tolerate views that in the past might not have been acceptable to us.”
In the joy that ordinary Chinese have taken in the Olympics there is a sense
of a people at last comfortable with their place in the grander scheme of
things. “When Chinese people were taught history,” says Mei, “it was
stressed they must never forget the past, the defeats and humiliations at
the hands of the imperialist countries, although they weren’t told about the
bad things that happened after the founding of the new republic.”
In her novel Becoming Madame Mao, Anchee Min’s heroine laments the China of
her childhood. “Why are the foreigners the masters of factories, owners of
railways and private mansions in our country? I remember once my grandfather
sighed deeply and said it was useless to learn to read - the more one was
educated, the deeper one felt humiliation.”
Two nights ago a young Chinese fashion designer, Huang Zu, watched the opening
ceremony with her Canadian husband, Chris Chaplin, on a big screen at a
Beijing park. She was excited by the experience. “It was China telling the
world, ‘We can do this’. We are a country that was left behind for so many
years, but now we are strong, we have money and we have people who love
their country who can do this.”
For much of her life, Huang’s understanding of her country was incomplete. “We
were told that China was once very strong, but that a lot of dynasties and
emperors weakened the country. We didn’t talk about the bad things. When I
met Chris, he told me what happened in Tiananmen Square, the tanks and all
that. I said, ‘Oh, really, is that what happened?’ I had grown up in a city
in the northeast, we knew nothing of that, and I realised I didn’t know my
own country. I only knew what they wanted me to know.
“People will look at things in China and not understand. They may think it is
a little stupid the way we do things, but with so much history and
tradition, you can’t let a country change too fast. We are trying to follow
the world, and I think that in the future we will be all right.”
Outsiders have reservations about China’s use of the Olympics, fearing its
masterful organisation and likely climb to the top of the medals table will
divert attention from the government’s human rights record. But in a country
that has achieved spectacular economic growth since reforms were implemented
in 1978, not many see it like that. In this 30-year period, more Chinese
people have been made materially better off than ever before in human
history. Whatever the outside views about the system of government, there is
an achievement here that needs to be acknowledged.
When the Games were given to Beijing in 2001 and China was offered the chance
to present itself on a world stage, it knew what it would do with the
opportunity. It has shown us a country that is capable, resilient and
wonderfully able to get things done. The Chinese have also shown themselves
to be pretty damn good hosts. In t h e i d e a l i s e d a n d o f t e n
ridiculed Olympian world, it is what the Games were meant to be, people
talking and learning to understand each other better.
As sports fans, we can also be pleased that Michael Phelps and his athletic
mates have the stage they deserve.
