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Jessica Ennis-Hill: A Coach's Story BBC Documentary 2016

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Documentary going behind the scenes of Jessica Ennis-Hill's bid to defend her heptathlon title at the Rio 2016 Olympics, seen through the eyes of her coach . Documentary going behind the scenes of Jessica Ennis-Hill's bid to defend her heptathlon title at the Rio 2016 Olympics, seen through the eyes of her coach.

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Scouting football players as young as five, persuading an 11-year-old to sign a contract with private school education or offering a teenager's parents a house.

These are some of the things English clubs are doing to secure the country's best youngsters in an increasingly desperate fight to beat rivals to sign potential stars.

"Money talks," sighs Sheffield United's chief academy scout Luke Fedorenko as he describes how he has just lost two 11-year-olds to Manchester City. "But we must be doing something right."

Fedorenko was one of 320 coaches and scouts at a recent Football Association conference at St George's Park to discuss what one keynote speaker, Professor Ross Tucker, calls a "race to the bottom".

There are 12,500 players in the English academy system, but only 0.5% of under-nines at top clubs are likely to make it to the first team. There are also suggestions that drop-out rate in football is similar to other sports, such as rugby union, which can lose 76% of players between the ages of 13 and 16.

So are clubs still searching for the right formula for spotting talent? And with the number of foreign players in English football already making it harder for academy players to reach the top, is a different approach required at the bottom end to ensure talent doesn't slip through the net?

The crystal ball approach

"Anyone who tells you they can spot a professional player at five years old is basically lying," says talent ID manager Nick Levett, an expert in the eight to 11-year-old age group and one of several FA appointments encouraging clubs to improve in this field.

That extends to players aged 12, 13 or even later if Leicester striker Jamie Vardy is anything to go by. After being released by Sheffield Wednesday aged 16 for being too small, he was then sold by Fleetwood to the Foxes in 2012 and recently set a new Premier League record for goals scored in consecutive games.

Vardy's story, however, underlines an important factor: he stayed in the system, at non-league sides Stocksbridge Park Steels and Fleetwood, which allowed his talent to flourish at a later stage.

Tucker calls players like Vardy "ghosts"; those who once had potential but have been lost in the system. He says the key to improvement in identifying talent in youngsters is patience and recognising the bias which cuts players like Vardy adrift in the first place.

Bigger might not be better

One of the biggest disparities in football or any junior sport is the relative age effect - the advantage of being born earlier in the school year, and therefore being more physically mature.

A seven-year-old born in September is likely to be bigger, faster and stronger than one born the following July.

Two seasons ago, Levett studied a Surrey junior league with 8,000 players and found that division one in all age groups had the oldest players on average, while division seven had the youngest. He also found that 45% of players in top-level academies have players born between September and November.

But among 57 England players with 50 or more caps, he found that the highest percentage of them - 46% - were born between March and May. It is a story replicated in other sports, such cricket and rugby union.

"The big drop-out in grassroots sport between the ages of 13 and 15 is the 'quarter three' or 'quarter four' kids," he says, referring to those born between March and August. "But somewhere along the line, the late ones are coming through."

So what's going on?

Levett believes that while the bigger players use their pace and power to solve problems on a pitch, the younger ones have to think smarter.

"The system has to challenge the big lads with the same sort of learning the small ones get every week," he adds.

Kids need to be kids

One of the reasons why the 10,000-hour theory has become so popular is that it gives rise to the notion that anyone can become world class if they put the graft in.

The theory suggests that practising any skill for 10,000 hours is sufficient to make you an expert.

"Parents are now taking their kids to five different clubs each week night in the belief that if they do more football they are going to get better," says Levett. "But it doesn't always work like that."

Levett claims Nathaniel Chalobah did not play his first game of football until he was nine, yet the Chelsea midfielder, on loan at Napoli, was playing for England Under-16s seven years later and is now a regular in the under-21 team.

Another survey carried out by Levett on under-21 players revealed that most of them did not start taking football seriously until they were 14 or 15.

Former Bolton captain Kevin Davies, whose son is in the Championship club's academy, recalls watching a match where he had seen under-10 players "reduced to tears" by the pressure.

"Kids need to be kids," he says. "If they are good enough and have the right attitude, they will get there in the end."

Any coach will tell you that practice is a good thing, but specialising in one sport can lead to boredom, psychological damage or injury.

Is 'edge' a good thing?

In praising Vardy's rise to prominence, Bolton boss Neil Lennon has said the current academy system produces "cocooned" players who perhaps do not have the edge to make it to the top.

Former Arsenal scout Damien Comolli says the problem is a Europe-wide one, with high wages among teenagers also denting their hunger.

"Most have a comfortable life and environment and those two things fail to produce players who need to fight every day on the field," the former director of football at Tottenham and Liverpool told BBC Sport.

"If you look at attacking players at the top 20 or 30 teams across Europe, many are from South America. From a mental aspect, they have a greater drive."

The Frenchman thinks players with an edge can be labelled as having "baggage" and are sometimes dismissed too early.

He asks: "Maybe we should look for an edge? What's the risk in taking them into an academy anyway. You're not giving them a 10-year contract are you?"

Unconscious bias

When Comolli first saw Netherlands striker Robin van Persie at Feyenoord, he was playing in the reserves and got sent off after fighting an opponent. Yet the talent was evident and he had a desire to improve, so they eventually took him to Arsenal.

But Levett believes many scouts are guilty of applying an unconscious bias, especially when watching players they might not automatically relate to.

He describes how a "very professional" scout with "high morals" once saw a talented forward start arguments with an opponent and the referee, before having a fight with a team-mate.

"There was a flash of genius when the player hit the post but the scout decided the player wasn't for him," Levett adds. "Soon afterwards, he had to explain to his club how they had missed out on Stan Collymore [former Liverpool and England striker]."

England Under-21 boss Gareth Southgate told BBC Sport: "What I'm more aware of over time is the individuality of people and how you have to treat them differently. You need to be careful of the assumptions you make."

Spotting the long-term learners

With the FA now helping clubs improve their approach to talent identification and the likes of Southampton running the world's first biological age tournament, there are some signs that the penny is starting to drop.

FA head of talent ID Richard Allen, formerly at Tottenham, says: "In terms of the players we have in academies, we are probably the strongest we have ever been but we can improve the way we look for 'ghosts'.

"Players who hit the heights have different pathways. We have to recognise that, rather than thinking at 16 it's too late for our boys to develop, so let's go abroad and buy somebody."

Levett warned that performance is not the only indicator: "There are many factors, but ultimately, we need to be patient with kids and spot the long-term learners. That's where the big gains are."

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Football talent spotting: Are clubs getting it wrong with kids?

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Scouting football players as young as five, persuading an 11-year-old to sign a contract with private school education or offering a teenager's parents a house. These are some of the things English clubs are doing to secure the country's best youngsters in an increasingly desperate fight to beat rivals to sign potential stars.

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Take 30 seconds to dash through the 13 quick questions in our sports quiz and we'll have our best stab at suggesting which events from the Commonwealth Games could match your physical and mental abilities. About this quiz
Disclaimer: The BBC is not responsible for any injuries caused by your participation in any sport. Before embarking upon any sporting activity, you should seek medical advice. Remember to take advice from coaches who can help you achieve your maximum potential and, most importantly, to enjoy your chosen sport or sports.
How does the quiz work?
The quiz is based on a model devised by sports scientists from Loughborough University. Firstly, a list of the physical and mental attributes crucial to success in sport was drawn up. Then, each sport in the Commonwealth Games was rated against these attributes. For example, gymnastics was rated as needing high levels of agility and power, while weightlifting was rated highly for power but required little agility.

When a user answers the quiz they are rating themselves against the same list of categories. This allows their results to be compared against each sport to find the closest match to a reader's self-assessment.
What do the results mean?
Having a close match to a particular sport does not necessarily mean that you will be poor at other Commonwealth Games sports which are not listed in your results. It just means that, on the basis of your answers, these are the sports you might want to try.
Are some sports more suited to a typical person?
Some sports require extreme characteristics, for example not many shorter people are likely to succeed in netball, and those with lower levels of endurance are unlikely to do well in the triathlon. But people may find that other sports, including badminton and table tennis, are more accessible as they do not rely on having such extreme attributes or capabilities. Such sports are therefore likely to be a good match for people who rate themselves as about average for many of the categories included in this quiz.

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Quiz produced by Chris Ashton, Ransome Mpini, Paul Plunkett, Ian Shoesmith, Charlotte Thornton, John Walton and Marcelo Zanni.

Scientific advisers: Dr David Fletcher, Senior Lecturer in Performance Psychology and Management, and Dr Jonathan Folland, Reader in Human Performance and Neuromuscular Physiology at Loughborough University's School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences. Our thanks also go to Loughborough University PhD students Andrew Shaw and Gillian Cook.

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Which sport are you made for? Take our 60-second test

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Take 30 seconds to dash through the 13 quick questions in our sports quiz and we'll have our best stab at suggesting which events from the Commonwealth Games could match your physical and mental abilities. About this quiz Disclaimer: The BBC is not responsible for any injuries caused by your participation in any sport.

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LTA TALENT ID-KYLE

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https://woodavjones.wordpress.com/wcc-talent-identification-programme/current-talent-identification-programmes/

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https://www.british-gymnastics.org/gymnasts/performance-pathway/what-is-the-pathway
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https://www.british-gymnastics.org/south/performance-pathway

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Taekwondo talent identification programme 

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Taekwondo talent identification programme 

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'FIGHTING CHANCE'

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Gary Hall talks about the Taekwondo talent identification programme Fighting Chance

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http://www.nfl.com/combine/

Daniel Crow

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajS3vk4MEQI

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgWWf6XsFJY

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UK Sport - Launch of Talent 2016 campaign

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UK Sport - Launch of Talent 2016 campaign Apply on-line to put yourself forward

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allplay challenger Jamie Theakston tests himself against some of the most talented young British tennis players as he has a go at Talent ID.

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A2 Physical Education Managing Elite Performance The Former East Germany, Australia and USA

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LOADS OF TESTS AND RESULTS - AUSTRALIA  & UK FOOTBALL

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LOADS OF TESTS AND RESULTS - AUSTRALIA  & UK FOOTBALL

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28062001

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Have the Olympics encouraged you to try a new sport? Check out what your body's idiosyncrasies might make you best at, and spot your hidden sporting talents.

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When Rachel Cawthorn was 15, her sporting career amounted to swimming a couple of times a week at her local club in Guildford. "It was mainly for fun," she says, shyly. "I tended to come in last, and I wasn't a very competitive person." Fast forward three years, and she is, at only 18, one of the world's best sprint canoeists, and a genuine gold-medal hope for London 2012.

Cawthorn only stepped into a boat after canoeing talent scouts turned up at her school and invited the taller girls to do some physical tests in the gym - she didn't look especially athletic, but her aerobic fitness and upper body strength impressed them. Nor was her first experience of a canoe particularly promising. "I got in one side and fell straight out the other," she laughs.

What the scouts and Cawthorn herself soon noticed, however, was her "feel for the water". She turned out to be exactly the fast learner they had been looking for. "I would never have imagined myself as an elite, Olympic sportsperson," she says now. "But the better I got, the more competitive I became."

As a doctor in sports medicine, working for the English Institute of Sport (EIS) for the past seven years, I have witnessed a transformation in Britain's Olympic and Paralympic success and growth since the nadir of Atlanta 1996, when Britain came home with a single gold, and finished 36th in the medal table. In the past dozen years, the government has allocated hundreds of millions of exchequer and lottery funding to sport through UK Sport and Sport England. My own job was born out that money, as are the positions of nearly 400 staff working through UK Sport and the EIS to support and develop elite athletes.

This investment has had rich rewards - as demonstrated in Beijing - and the funding has fuelled a professionalism seen most vividly in cycling, sailing, rowing and canoeing, as well as winter sports such as bob skeleton. Performance directors have introduced business models to their sports and now nothing is left to chance; the "aggregation of small gains" is constantly reviewed. Investment in quality coaches, performance analysis, scientific and medical support, technical equipment and facilities has transformed the landscape, and British success at the last two Olympics has been a resounding endorsement of the funding programme.

But however well oiled the sporting machine, it still needs athletes: new recruits to feed into the now successful models of refinement and performance. And it needs the right athletes - which is why a team of scientists turned up at Rachel Cawthorn's school back in 2005.

Traditionally, recruitment into Olympic sports in this country has been haphazard. Athletes have emerged not from a finely honed system of selection, but from a mix of clubs, schools and families, with the right athlete finding the right coach often purely by chance. In the fringe sports, many athletes would have a sporting family; I have seen, during my own involvement in canoeing and cricket, generations of paddlers or cricketers coming through. Clearly genetics, and growing up with an "environmental" background in sport, may maximise a child's abilities; however, it does not mean that they are the most talented, or that their parents are the best coaches. It remains a very limited pool of talent. Olympic teams have been dependent on the same small field from which to cultivate their talent and, not surprisingly, there have been some very barren years. Injury or illness to one key athlete could finish off an Olympic programme.

In the past decade, British sporting bodies have been studying recruiting models in other countries where the numbers of athletes is similarly limited. East Germany in the 1960s and 70s stood out as the leading proponent of what has become the increasingly precise science of talent identification. But their science served a grotesque end, creating a legacy of doping and other extreme measures that continues to blight the lives of those affected. Nevertheless, Australia has distilled elements of the East German programmes to identify the right athlete for the right sport. The pilot programmes in the 1980s, which focused on rowers, produced notable success (in the 1992 Barcelona Games, Australia won two rowing golds, their first since 1948, and followed them up with two more in Atlanta). Formal programmes introduced in the 90s led to a record haul for the country at Sydney 2000.

The idea of "talent ID" is nothing new: even at school, PE teachers will assign the big lads to the forwards and the speed machines to the backs. Football academies snap up talent as young as possible, trawling widely and gradually discarding all but the very best. Tennis academies work on a doctrine of "make or break them" over an average 10,000 hours of tennis practice. Some sports even use military exercises to help explore athletes' potential for leadership and teamwork. In a heavily populated country such as the US, which is overwhelmed with athletic potential, enormous college and high school programmes feed into professional sports, with huge "meat market" testing days before the rounds of draft picks each year.

In the UK, the process of talent identification has had to become more imaginative and precise. Many of the Olympic sports have minimal publicity and little prospect of recruiting in large numbers (consider the number of children you know who have seriously tried their hand at watersports, or at shooting, tae kwon do or eventing). In the absence of a large pool of talent, the focus has turned to actively seeking and selecting those with the right physical and mental attributes for specific sports. And how to quantify "the right stuff" is becoming increasingly refined.

Two years ago, UK Sport launched its first public appeal for athletes with Sporting Giants: a programme seeking talent for "tall sports", such as rowing, handball and volleyball. It invited men over 6ft4in, and women over 5ft11in, who were already competing in a sport at county or regional level, to sign up for trials. From a database of more than 3,500, the trial system has now placed 45 athletes in Olympic development programmes, 30 of those in rowing. Victoria Thornley, who was a showjumper when she signed up, this year took gold at the Under-23 rowing World Championships, as part of the first British women's eight to win the competition.

So how does it work? Each sport identifies its own requirements with the help of Talent ID scientists, whose background in sports science, physiology and skill acquisition enables them to research and define a profile of successful athletes in that sport - what qualities do the best rowers, windsurfers or volleyball players in the world have in common?

Kayaking has been an early adopter of the techniques. It established a three-phase process, beginning with a mass screening of many hundreds of applicants, measuring strength, endurance, speed and skill on special testing days. From these, 24 were selected for the second phase: skill testing specific to canoeing disciplines. Could they go from sitting in a boat and falling over to competently completing 500m time trials in a short space of time? Ten athletes were ultimately selected to undergo an intensive, three-month talent confirmation process. During this period they received full-time coaching at camps based at the National Water Sports Centre in Nottingham, including intensive conditioning, and scientific and medical screening. It wasn't only their basic athleticism that was assessed, their psycho-social makeup was considered too: did they have the right mental attributes? Sports psychologists were on hand to observe their behaviour under pressure, and to look at their sporting history.

The programme has been a startling success, with Cawthorn - identified in the first round of schools testing - one of its most notable protégées. Three years after picking up a paddle for the first time, she was competing in the Sydney Youth Olympics, where she won two silver medals. This June, she secured Britain's first ever medal in the Women's K1 500, at the European Championships in Germany, and finished fourth in the World Championships, as well as fifth in the K4 500 - the best ever British results in women's sprint canoeing.

But it is not all about retraining school children; kayaking and other sports are increasingly looking to recruit "mature" (age 16+) athletes. In fact, certain sports seem to reward those who come to them later in their athletic development. Shelley Rudman took up bob skeleton after spending her teenage years training in track and field and won Britain's only medal in the 2006 Winter Games; Rebecca Romero made history by swapping her rowing boat for track cycling gold at Beijing last year; and Emma Pooley was a cross-country runner before representing Britain in road cycling. This kind of successful talent transfer was the inspiration behind last year's launch of Girls4Gold, a nationwide recruitment drive for competitive women aged 17-25 into the sports of cycling, canoeing, rowing, bob skeleton, modern pentathlon and windsurfing.

Chelsea Warr, head of athlete development at UK Sport, says that research studying the biographies of elite sporting performers has uncovered some interesting trends. "Many successful Olympians have played a wide variety of sports, often successfully, to a relatively late age. This appears to give them a richer variety of inputs than those who have spent their entire life in one sport. Interestingly, a number of elite performers have also emerged from small cities or towns where they often had to compete against older peers. Athletes with this sporting history seem to have acquired a wide repertoire of skills, ultimately allowing them to springboard to the podium." The "other" sports may make more of a difference than we think - may, in fact, be a performance advantage. Another significant by-product of talent ID is the enlargement of the elite athlete pool, driving domestic competition for places and pushing established athletes even harder.

This concept of picking late-maturing athletes makes instinctive sense. Not only do they have a foundation of athletic physical development but they have had time to develop, and indeed demonstrate, stable personalities, self-motivation and independent training. We already know of a number of athletes that have played to a high level across a number of sports, including James Milner (football, cricket, long-distance running), Phil Neville (football, cricket), Darren Campbell (athletics, football) and Ian Botham (cricket, football). Once you have this foundation you can, it seems, "bolt on" a sport's technical aspects.

Last year saw the launch of Pitch2Podium, a programme targeting previously untapped pools of sporting talent from football and rugby academies. Only a tiny percentage of football academy scholars make it into a professional career, and, in conjunction with the Football Association, UK Sport and EIS have run screening days at the Madejski Stadium in Reading for academy students, looking at sprint, jump, endurance and strength tests to determine which sport they might be suitable for. Cycling, bob skeleton, modern pentathlon and canoeing have all benefited. James Hoad, a goalkeeper at Watford FC's academy, has made a successful transition to bob skeleton, in which he is now competing on the international circuit, and hopes to represent Great Britain in the Winter Olympics 2014, if not Vancouver 2010.

However, it is not all about how high you can jump, or how fast you can sprint. In the US the major sports such as American football use a network of scouts and "information gathering instruments" to build a picture of an individual's social background and mental profiling. Private investigators have, it is alleged, been used to check on leading draft picks. Arsène Wenger actively recruits the most talented teenagers from around the world but they will not make it beyond the Arsenal academy unless they possess sufficient emotional maturity, leadership, self-motivation and other aspects of emotional intelligence. But elsewhere the psycho-social framework for assessing the makeup of a successful athlete's personality traits is still in its infancy in this country.

What is clear is that a lot of these processes require time and investment. Certainly our understanding of what makes the precise recipe of mental and physical skills for each sport is still in its infancy, but there are several UK sports bodies innovating behind the scenes and in time we will see the fruits of these labours. For all we know, David Beckham might come back as a cyclist.
Topics

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When Rachel Cawthorn was 15, her sporting career amounted to swimming a couple of times a week at her local club in Guildford. "It was mainly for fun," she says, shyly. "I tended to come in last, and I wasn't a very competitive person."

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Uk Sport / EIS Collaboration

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Natalie Dunman: We have a number of campaigns which includes Talent 2016 - Tall and Talented. This campaign is primarily directed towards rowing and basketball, but we are also looking at some other Olympic sports as well.
RYG: What is involved in launching a campaign?
ND: We set a profile in launching a campaign to get it out to as many individuals as possible who fit the criteria. We then invite them to apply online and ask them to come along to a testing day with Talent ID scientists and coaches from different sports.

Here they'll be put through a number of assessments, normally physical to start off, which measure height, arm span, upper body strength and power, endurance and speed. A number of them will then be selected to go along to a more sport specific assessment day, where we start looking at some more psychological and skill based attributes.
RYG: Where do you get the data from? How do you get the profiles set up?
ND: It is quite a lengthy process. You start by looking at your most successful athletes, such as Olympic and world champions, and look at what characteristics they possess. That data is collected over a number of years and it also relies on some coaching expertise.

Many of the coaches that work within each of the sports have been doing this for years and they're absolute experts at identifying who and what they need. We'll work with them to develop that profile using all of the data that's been collected.
RYG: What about the people who decide it's not for them, do you keep them involved in sport?
ND: If they're really interested in the sport, but they aren't making it to the standards that we're looking for, we'd encourage them to continue with the sport but at a slightly different level. We'd give them details of their local clubs and coaches and encourage them to go on and take up that sport.

If they really don't like it, and want to go back to the sport they were doing before, or they want to look at another opportunity, then we would encourage them to do that. However, if we thought that they were really talented in this sport and they just didn't like it, then we would spend more time working with them to see if there was something we could change or maybe look at a talent transfer.

We had a number of examples when we did Sporting Giants last time round where some really talented guys weren't quite right for rowing, so we switched them into canoeing.
RYG: What skills do you focus on in the training camps? How do you make sure the athletes can cope with the experience?
ND: Many of the themes that you've have on Raise Your Game are the things that we look at. The physical side and the actual sports specific skills are just two parts to the puzzle. We're looking for people that have drive, determination and commitment, and are willing to keep trying when the going gets tough.
RYG: How important is the athlete-coach relationship?
ND: Absolutely essential. You've got the athletes, but if you didn't have the fantastic coaches none of this would happen. The coaches have special qualities as they are working with athletes that are perhaps coming into a sport at a slightly older age than normal.
RYG: How do you keep the athletes focused on the long term goal?
ND: When they first come in we say the ultimate goal is to win more medals in 2016, but there are also other goals along the way. The coaches are very good at setting intermediate and short term goals. There will also be intermediate skill based assessments along the way. Hopefully these will keep people motivated and allow them to see that they're progressing all the way through to 2016.
RYG: How do you inspire more girls to get involved in sport?
ND: We started our Girls for Gold campaign partly because when we ran Sporting Giants there was a massive imbalance of male to female applications. We know that there are lots of girls out there that are sporty but are just in the wrong sport.

We really wanted to try and reach those people and try and give them an opportunity to come, be tested and see what they could be good at. We used female role models such as Vicky Pendleton and Shelly Rudman to front the campaign and they talked about their experiences.

RYG: How did you become a Talent ID scientist?

ND: I was always really interested in sport when I was at school. I swam to a fairly good standard, but I never quite made it to the next level. I like to think that if one of these programmes was around then I would have achieved it.

I went to university and studied sports science and then went on to do a Masters in sports science as well. Whilst I was in university I tried to get as much experience working with sports as possible. I was lucky enough to get an internship with British Swimming and worked with their sports science team for two years. I also completed an internship in physiology with the English Institute of Sport, then worked in physiology and eventually Talent ID science.
RYG: Which is more important talent or attitude?
NA: I'd say that attitude is actually part of talent. You have a certain talent in a certain area, but we're looking for people that have all the pieces of the jigsaw.
RYG: Do you agree that anyone can participate in sport, regardless of their ability?
ND: We are looking for people that can go to the top, but there is always a pathway for everybody. Whether that is going down the gym or playing for your local hockey team. There is a place for everybody in sport so we absolutely encourage everyone to get involved.
RYG: Have you noticed a big increase in people applying with London 2012 on the horizon?
ND: Our team came about as a result of London winning the bid for the Olympics 2012, so our first campaigns were focused around London. We thought that there would be a bigger interest because of London however, when we collected information from athletes on why they put themselves forward, the home Olympics didn't come out very highly. The main motivation was the desire to win an Olympic medal followed by a curiosity to try a new sport.
RYG: What would your advice be for anyone wanting to get involved in a sport?
ND: Take every opportunity that comes your way. If you are interested in a particular sport then go out there and find out how you can become involved and grab that opportunity. Being involved in sport at any level is great. There's a strong social element to it and you learn about motivation and commitment.
RYG: If you could have a perfect Olympic athlete, what skills would they have?
ND: A really strong drive to keep going when the going gets tough, the ability to perform under pressure and mental toughness.

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Natalie Dunman: We have a number of campaigns which includes Talent 2016 - Tall and Talented. This campaign is primarily directed towards rowing and basketball, but we are also looking at some other Olympic sports as well. RYG: What is involved in launching a campaign?

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Hard Life of a Chinese Athlete | China Uncensored

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China and the Olympics: Shichahai Sports School

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At Shichahai Sports School, one of Beijing's best, athletes dream of winning gold metals.

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Derbyshire Talent Identification and Development Plan

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'Power2Podium', the latest in a series of successful talent identification schemes run by the UK Talent Team, is targeting sportsmen and women between the ages of 15 and 26 that possess the speed, power and raw talent to potentially represent GB at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio and 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea...

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Srt_dF5sO-g

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Tough Chinese Sports Schools Teach Children Gymnastics

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When China set up its sports and athletics program it followed the Soviet model for athletic development, and established a system in which promising youngsters were selected at a young age and sent to special state-sponsored "boot-camp-style" training centers, where they endured rigorous training programs and were prepared for international competition. Scouts from various sports crisscross the country looking for athletes with proper physique and skills.

China has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on sports academies, talent scouts, psychologists, foreign coaches and latest technology and science. China puts particular emphasis on developing programs in sports that have a lot events and give lots of medals such as shooting, gymnastics, swimming, rowing and track and field.

By the time of the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, China had spent an estimated $260 million to develop a national sports program. That year it won only five gold medals, yet many young athletes had entered the system who would do well in future Olympics. In 1992, China placed forth in the total medal count

In preparation for the Beijing Olympics more than 30,000 athletes are training full time, five times more than the number who will actually compete.

Websites and Resources

Good Websites and Sources on the Olympics in China: Chinese Olympic Committee en.olympic.cn ; China.org on China's Olympic History china.org.cn ; Database on Olympic Athletes databaseolympics.com ; Success of Chinese Athletes pponline.co.uk ; Photos of Chinese Kids Training freshpics.blogspot.com ; Book: Olympic Dreams by Wu Guoqi hup.harvard.edu ; The Red Face, a Film About Olympic Training Epoch Times ; High Altitude Training chinasportstoday.com ; Book: Olympic Dreams: China and Sports, 1895-2008 by Xu Gouqi

Good Websites and Sources on Sports in China: Wikipedia article Wikipedia ; China Sports Today chinasportstoday.com ; China Daily Sports chinadaily.com.cn ; China Sports Review chinasportsreview.com ; China Sports Blog chinasports.wokpopcorn.com ; South China Morning Post Sports scmp.com ; Sports in Ancient China Chinese Olympic Committee ; Traditional Sports Travel China Guide

Links in this Website: OLYMPICS AND CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; CHINESE OLYMPIC ATHLETES Factsanddetails.com/China ; CHINESE OLYMPIC TRAINING Factsanddetails.com/China ; THE 2008 OLYMPICS IN BEIJING Factsanddetails.com/China ; CHINESE ATHLETES AT THE 2008 OLYMPICS Factsanddetails.com/China ; OPENING CEREMONY AND STARS AT THE 2008 OLYMPICS IN BEIJING Factsanddetails.com/China ; OLYMPIC SPORTS IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; OLYMPIC SWIMMING AND DIVING IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; OLYMPIC TRACK AND RUNNING IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; LIU XIANG Factsanddetails.com/China ; OLYMPIC GYMNASTICS IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; OLYMPIC BADMINTON, SHOOTING WEIGHTLIFTING IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; CHINA---OLYMPICS Factsanddetails.com/China ;

Chinese Olympic Training Facilities

Today, around 300,000 athletes, including 96 percent of China's national champions, are trained at China's 150 elite sports camps, like the Wuhan Institute of Physical Education and the Zheijiang Provincial Physical Education and Sports School in Hangzhou, and tens of thousands of smaller local training centers. The Haigen Sports Training Base in Kunming is the largest sports training camp in China. An additional 3,000 sports schools are responsible for identifying and nurturing talent.

The National Training Center is Beijing is comprised of a number of large buildings, some modern, some drab. Guards check the IDs of people entering the facility. Guards are posted outside each building. Olympic swimming hopefuls train at a military base in Guangzhou. Distance runners put in high altitude miles in restricted regions of Tibet.

The Shanghai Sports School, where Olympic-gold-medal-winning hurdler Liu Xiang trains, is comprised mostly of 20-year-old buildings that look 20 years older. Photos celebrating Liu's world record are posted everywhere. A large sign read: BE POSITIVE, WORK HARD, CLIMB THE HIGH MOUNTAIN, WIN GLORY FOR THE COUNTRY.
Olympic Training Schools in China
In China there are more than 3,000 government-run sports schools, 20 major programs and 200 smaller programs. These schools and programs have produced nearly all of China's Olympics athletes. About 400,000 students were enrolled in sports schools in 2005.

Only about one in eight of sports school students make it to a provincial team. Of these a third eventually make it to the national team and about a fifth of national team members become Olympians-in-training but only about one in eight of these actually make the cut to the Olympics. This means that for every 900 pre-teens who join the sports school system 899 never make it to the Olympics.

Wu Yigang, a professor at Shanghai University, told the Washington Post, the Chinese sports school system is "very good at finding sports talent. It meets the demand of our nation to make achievements in a very short time." But on the other hand: "The Chinese way of training is problematic. These schools emphasize only training and neglect everything else...It greatly affects children's knowledge and their moral outlook."

Some schools stress only sports and can be viewed as little more than athlete-producing assembly lines. They often require six hours of training or more a day. Many Chinese athletes have devoted so much of their time to training they can't read beyond the fifth grade level. Weifang City Sports School is comprised of a collection of moldy concrete buildings and gyms that smell of sweat and urine and dirt playing fields. Students sleep eight to a room on iron bunk beds and often collapses there, exhausted, during their brief afternoon break. The school has its own propaganda director and a bulletin board where students post self-criticism essays and is filled with slogans like "Learn from our Comrades and Create a New and Glorious Olympics."

Other schools aim to produce more well-rounded athletes with academic as well as sports skills. The Qingdao Sport School in Shandong has a reputation for being particularly enlightened and modern. It has nice dorm rooms, coaches that understand the benefits of rest and a faculty that helps students get into university.

Zhabei-District Children's Sports School in Shanghai produced four athletes that competed in Beijing in 2008, in table tennis, swimming and volleyball. It has 700 K-12 students and , state-of-the art sports facilities and coaches who were once elite athletes themselves. Zhabei is relatively strong in academics. It only requires 90 minutes of sports training a day

Olympic Recruiting Methods in China

Peter Hesseler wrote in the New Yorker: "The method of early recruitment is a product of China's inability to provide every public school with coaches and sports facilities. The system has proved effective in low-participation, routine-based sports like gymnastics and diving."

Olympic historian David Wallechinsky told the Washington Post, "They can mobilize their population of 1.3 billion people by reaching throughout the country and doing the German thing of looking for children of certain body types and going to their parents and getting them to send them to national training centers."

In a typical city, every government district is asked to test and assess children from ages 8 to 13, and select candidates for sports schools. Children that show promise move on to bigger government training academies when they are teenagers.

Doctors measure height, arm span, bone density, flexibility and other things to predict what a child will be like in the future. X-rays and bone tests are used to determine bone density and structure and predict future growth.

Children demonstrating exceptional flexibility and balance are sent to gymnastics and diving camps. Tall children are sent to volleyball and basketball camps. Those with quick reflex are guided into ping pong. Kids with long arms are pushed into swimming or javelin throwing. Those with shorts arms make ideal weightlifters. Potential archers are picked on the basis of a test of steady nerves in which they are asked to spread their palm and stack as many .22 caliber bullets as they can on top of one another. Ideal candidates can stack eight or more bullets. Only those that can that can stack six or more are even looked at. Strong shoulders, superior vision and a cool demeanor are viewed as desirable attributes for archery.

Chinese Athletes Who Were Recruited

China-born, Los Angeles Times journalist Ni Ching Ching wrote: "When I was in the first grade, scouts from the Communist sports machinery came to our school to hunt for future champions. The event was diving. Never mind that I couldn't swim and had no desire to be an athlete, I was told I had the right proportions and good feet. Chosen from a field of thousands to train at a state sports school, I was supposed to be thrilled to serve my country."

Liu Huana, a player from the countryside who earned a place on China's national women's soccer team, told the Washington Post, "I had never heard of soccer until I was 13, when I moved to the county for my fifth-grade studies. One day people from the local athletic school came to our school to select new members. The teacher recommended me because I was the fastest runner in the class. I wore a skirt and sandal shoes that day, and I just took off my shoes and ran."

Yao was sent to a full-time sports academy when he was 12. At that age he was already 6 foot, five inches. By measuring his knuckles sports officials predicted he would grow to 7 foot five inches and special attention was given to groom him to be a future star. Yao later said he didn't even like playing the game until he 18 or 19. "My parents would probably prefer for me to go to college and play basketball only as a hobby." To make sure he didn't skip practice his coach went to his house and accompanied him to practice everyday.
Going to a Sports School in China
Many of the students in sports schools are recommended by coaches or are found by full-time scouts who travel the country looking for talent. Some are enrolled by their parents at cost of $100 a year. Some parents are motivated by ambition. Some just want a decent education for their children.

In the old days, parents were hard-strapped just to give their kids enough food to eat and rarely turned down an invitation for their kids to attend a sports school. But today there are many opportunities outside of sports and parents say they don't want to limit their kids to just one thing and are not as gung ho about sending them to sports schools as they once were.

One 12-year-old who showed promise as a sprinter but turned down an opportunity to go to an elite sports school told the Washington Post: "My dad thinks as a primary school student my studies are still most important...I don't want to either. I still prefer book studies. I feel athletic training is just for health."

Parents of promising athletes who are poor are often given a home in their hometowns by the local sports bureau. Many Parents with kids at sports schools say they talk to their children rarely on the phone and when they do, their kids say little more than yes, no and okay, When asked about her family at the 2008 Games in Beijing, one diver said, "They didn't come to watch the game. I don't care about this."
Chinese Athletes and Sports Schools
Students sleep on bunk beds in dormitory rooms. Between training sessions and classroom work they nap and rest in their rooms. Some students spend very little time on academics. One 15-year-old runner at Weifang City Sports school told Time she rarely cracked a book or even attended classes. When asked what she does, she said, "I run, and I sleep. That's my day."

Chen Yun, a 14-year-old daughter of a vegetable vendor in Shandong Province described in Time magazine, had never even heard of weightlifting when she was selected to train at Weifang City Sports School as a weightlifter based on measurements of her shoulder width, thigh length and waist size. When asked by Time what her favorite sport was, she said "weightlifting." Her hobby? "Weightlifting." When she started describing how she used to like to run in the fields around her village, the school's propaganda director interrupted, and Chen said, "I prefer weightlifting now. I want t become a star athlete and make China proud."

Olympic Training Methods in China

At the sports centers for young athletes, children are put through rigorous drills in old gyms on canvas mats in training sessions held several times a day throughout the day and sometimes into the night. The athletes rarely see their families. A coach at a sports camp where nine-year-old gymnasts worked out and lived 1,000 miles away from their homes told Newsweek, "A first they miss their parents. But they get used to it."

The first years of training often revolve around doing simple drills over and over and involve very little of doing the actual sport. Prospective archers, for example, spend the first year working on the release of the bowstring by repeatedly bending the bow as far back as they can, holding the position, often wincing in pain as they do, to strengthen their muscles.

Los Angeles Times journalist Ni Ching Ching wrote: "What I hated most about our training was the repetition. One drill was to jump from the end of the pool, feet first one hundred times facing the pool. One hundred times facing away. And another 100 times head first. Like piano scales, these were the basics of diving, We called them Popsicles, bing quer, because they required a tight, streamlined entry.

"I managed these robotic leaps from the sides of the pool, fudging the numbers as I went. But when the coach ordered us to do the same jumps from the 3-meter platform I showed my true colors...I was terrified of heights...I stood for an eternity on the diving board. The coaches were yelling. I couldn't do it. With the weight of the world on me I closed my eyes and saw the end of my suffering. Instead of taking a leap of faith I literally stood my ground and crawled down the stairs."

Gold-medal-wining weightlifter Liu Chunhing Liu was happy about her victory in 2008 and was also happy to have a break from her training. She told AP after winning the medal, "What I want the most at this moment is to spend some time with my parents. Since the last Olympics until now I have only spent six days with my parents.

Many athletes are fed special diets with special herbs and exotic Chinese medicines. Swimmers have been fed a concoction containing ginseng and deer horn while runners under the infamous coach Ma Junren were given an elixir made of fresh turtle blood.

In preparation for the 2008 Olympics, China's gymnastics coaches were required to sign contracts promising not to let their athletes get injured before the Beijing games. The move came after star gymnast and Olympics champion Li Xiaoping was sidelined for a year because of an injury.

Olympic Training for Gifted Athletes in China

Yao Ming was regarded as such a lucky find he was watched nearly 24 hours a day and served meals in special kitchen "reserved for champions." Yao joined the Shanghai Sharks when was 13. The training was tough. The Shark's coach put him and the other players through four practices a day: The first at 6:30am, the last ending at 8:30pm.

Olympic gold medal diver Fu Mingxia entered the Beijing Sports School when she was nine. She told Time magazine that she cried out of homesickness for the first few months but found the training session emptied her of her emotions. "We don't have much time for other activities," she said, which for her were "listening to music, watching television and getting massages." She saw her parents only once a year and often was not allowed to see them when they attended her diving meets.

Players on the women's soccer national team wake up at 7:30am and have two slices of bread with butter and an egg, sometimes with a little beef or vegetables. After a morning briefing practice begins at 10:00am and ends around noon, followed by a bath, a quick nap and lunch. After lunch there is another briefing and another practice session from 4:00pm to 6:00pm. Then its dinner and a session with massage therapists. There are many rules and regulations, including no cell phones or computers except for a short period in the evening. [Source: Washington Post]

At his sports school basketball player Yi Jianlian said, "I lived in a dorm with four or five guys and one bathroom. We had classwork from 8 to 11:30. I didn't like classes. Basketball training was a lot of running and team-oriented drills. It was tough. The first time I did the 400-meter run I couldn't finish. I was so upset I wanted to quit. If someone doesn't perform there, they are asked to leave."

Problems with Olympic Training Methods in China

The Chinese sports system is geared for creating a handful of top knotch athletes and discarding the rest. "It is really a factory system," U.S. diving coach told Newsweek. "They go through many, many young divers that don't make it to get those who do."

Sports Illustrated journalists in China said they found "evidence of every dubious Western sporting practice: free agency, bought-out contracts, cult-figure coaches, the use of performance-enhancing drugs, and squabbles over money." Winners at a competition observed in Shaanxi included imposters and ringers who should not have been allowed on the team. Fifty-four winners were found to have false papers and the closing ceremonies were concealed to save face.

Sports Illustrated came across an athletic "trade fair" that resembled a slave market: "Representatives of provincial sports commissions distributed catalogs listing some 1,300 homegrown athletes...Physical dimensions, achievements in competitions and an 'asking price' were listed for each athlete." [Source: Alexander Wolff, Sport Illustrated]

Problems Faced by Athletes They Leave Their Sports

Some former athletes get jobs as coaches or in sport associations. Some start their own businesses, selling sporting equipment or promoting athletic centers. But many have no skills and no more than an elementary school education and end up selling vegetables, laboring in factories, singing in bars or working as security guards. A local track-and-field coach told Newsweek, "When these kids leave athletic schools, they can't do anything, they have no skills. Local sports commissions sometimes provide jobs, but in the end, many become factory workers."

About 6,000 professional athletes a year retire, About 40 percent of them have difficulty finding jobs. The cradle-to-grave system that used to take care of them no longer exists. Some athletes are promised job as policemen when they retire and these promises are often broken.

China Sports Daily estimates that 80 percent of China's retired athletes suffer from unemployment, poverty or chronic health problems resulting from overtraining.

Many athletes that don't make the grade find themselves out on the street without an education they would have gotten had they attended a regular school. The Los Angeles Times talked with a former national weightlifting champion who took a job scrubbing backs at a public bathhouse for ten cents a piece because she said it was the only job she could get. Her education stopped when she was in the third grade and she had no marketable skills. Another weightlifter, who won a gold medal at the Asian Games, could only get a job as a doorman at a sports school. . Former runner Ai Dongmei, who placed sixth in the Boston marathon, sold her medals and sells clothes on the street and runs a popcorn stand in Beijing with her husband, also an athlete, for a few dollars a day.

A surprising number of coaches, even ones who were Olympics champions, are chain smokers. The IOC is investigating reports in China of coaches beating child gymnasts and swimmers.

Decline of the Soviet-Style Training System in China

Reliance on Soviet-style training systems are declining somewhat. With the one-child population control policy the government has less control over the lives of promising athletes than they used to. Parents with only one or two children are less likely to turn them over to the state for training than parents with large families especially if they leave the sport centers without any job skills.

In its place, China is attempted to merge high-level sports and education much the way the N.C.A.A. does at universities in the United States. The efforts still has a long way to go. Most universities have uninspiring sports teams made up of athletes with skills much lower than those trained at the state-run sports schools.

The sports programs for top athletes are less sinister than they are often made out to be. Athletes often spend as much time laughing and practicing dance routines as they do doing hard training. They are free to develop their own style and methods and are allowed to keep half their prize money and are given various bonuses for doing well. Some attribute China's recent success to a retreat from traditional authoritarian methods.

Yu Fen, the coach of Olympic divers like Fu Mingxia and Huo Jing Jing, quit the national team in 1997 in part because of the poor treatment of athletes and the lack of job training. She started a new team at prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing that mixes studying with athletics along the NCAA model and won public support for her cause when the national team stole her best divers.

Image Sources:

Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton's Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

&copy 2008 Jeffrey Hays

Last updated April 2010

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When China set up its sports and athletics program it followed the Soviet model for athletic development, and established a system in which promising youngsters were selected at a young age and sent to special state-sponsored "boot-camp-style" training centers, where they endured rigorous training programs and were prepared for international competition.

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Ye Shiwen Doping scandal

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She's a normal 16-year-old who loves reading detective stories, painting her mum's nails and chatting to pals on her pink mobile phone.

Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen may have won Olympic gold in the women's 400m individual medley by smashing more than a second off the world record and swimming the last 50m faster than the men's winner - but really, she's just a natural.

That is the story being peddled by China's state-run newspapers in tributes to the new national heroine.

Yet the rest of the world watches in envy as China heads for a record haul of medals... and wonders.

And the question many are asking is: How can they be that good?

The answer may well lie in the brutal training regimes youngsters are forced into following back home.

The truly astonishing teenage superwoman Ye Shiwen, whose truly unbelievable performance sent the word "doping" echoing around the Aquatics Centre before she had even taken off her goggles at the end of the race, is certainly NOT a natural-born winner.

The disturbing truth is that, while her performance may not be drug-enhanced, Ye Shiwen and her Chinese teammates have been manufactured like automatons on a cynical human production line, forged by training techniques many say border on torture.

Swimmers, gymnasts, boxers and athletes are all products of the £500million Mandarin Machine - the government programme designed to spew out Olympic gold medallists and ensure China's world domination of sport.

For the past four decades children as young as six have been tested for size, fitness and skill as part of a national "talent identification strategy".

With a population of 1.3 billion to choose from, more than 400,000 are selected and sent to 3,000 sports schools - or boot camps.

Here they are subjected to gruelling daily training and strict diets while some are even doped with hormone injections.

And, separated from their families for weeks or months on end, they are brainwashed into believing they have one purpose only - winning gold.

Each school specialises in certain sports - like gymnastics and diving, or volleyball, badminton and table tennis.

Steve Roush, former chief of sport performance for the US Olympic Committee, has visited China more than 20 times on fact-finding missions.

He said: "It is a pipeline like no other in the world. The athlete pool is so vast, so alive with skilled young talent, that there are always others pushing through.

"You just have to get better or get out of the way."

The Chinese insist youngsters' days are split between academic work and training, but some former pupils claim they simply trained, slept and ate.

Female diver Guo Jingjing retired last year at 29 after winning four Olympic golds and 17 world titles.

She said she craved "a quiet and normal life", adding tellingly: "I don't want to be a coach. I am quiet and soft-hearted and not suited to it.

"You have to be strict with young athletes during training and competitions and I couldn't do that."

Guo didn't talk about her own eyesight problems - rumoured to be so severe that she could hardly see the diving board as she competed.

The damage is said to be caused by her intense training. She began diving competitively at age six, before her retinas were fully developed.

Sport school training sessions are usually shrouded in secrecy but occasional glimpses have revealed bullying and even physical abuse.

Last year photos posted on the internet showed tiny gymnasts weeping silently as they endured torturous stretching exercises, children being made to do handstands for 30 minutes at a time to improve balance and endurance and seven-year-old swimmers forced to do 20 chin-ups, a task beyond most fit adults.

All schools are decorated with large Chinese flags - a reminder that pupils are national property - and signs bearing the single the word GOLD reinforce their patriotic duty.

Coaches even have a phrase which translates as "well-meant whipping".

Most foreign observers granted access to the schools insist they have not witnessed any actual abuse or intimidation.

But Olympic rowing hero Matthew Pinsent, who made two visits to the country ahead of the Beijing Games, was emotionally unprepared for the brutality of the coaching regime he uncovered during a visit to a school.

Pinsent, who understands better than most the hardship, pain and sacrifices that have to be endured by an Olympic champ, said: "I didn't like the way the coaches were dealing with the pupils."

He felt uneasy at the lack of smiles and enjoyment during training and managed to speak to some of the children, aged between five and 11, out of earshot of the coaches.

He said: "The pupils admitted they were being hit by their coaches.

"After hearing this, I spoke with the deputy head of the school and I was told that these things do happen.

"It seems the Chinese see this as part and parcel of creating success. "

Former swimmer Fan Hong described his country's philosophy more succinctly. He said: "Competitive sport is war without gunfire."

Stories of abuse are commonplace.

Diver Chen Ruolin competed in Beijing when she was 15 years old and just 4st 10lbs - the weight of an average nine-year-old.

Her coach had ordered her to skip dinner for a year before the Games to stay thin and make a smaller splash hitting the water.

And gold medal-winning weightlifter Cao Lei was so cut off from the outside world that no one told her that her mother was dying.

She only found out two months after the funeral, and never had a chance to say goodbye.

In 2007 marathon runner Ai Dongmei and two of her team-mates won damages from their former coach who had regularly beaten them and kept all their earnings.

And in another horrendous case two years ago a football player was kicked in the chest for daring to ask his coach what time he had to start training next day.

He fell, hit his head and died.

The coach got three years in jail for manslaughter and embarrassed officials insisted the use of violence was not condoned.

It was in the 1980s, after decades of humiliating deafeat by the Americans, that China adopted the controversial Cold War training regimes used by the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc states.

Inevitably they were soon dogged by the doping rows with scandals throughout the 1990s and 2000s including the discovery in 1998 of 13 vials of a human growth hormone - enough to supply the entire team - in the kitbag of a female swimmer who was searched at Sydney airport.

In 2006 the Liaoning Anshan Athletics School was found to be doping unsuspecting pupils as young as 15 with testosterone.

But now the super-human performances of Team China 2012 have raised speculation about a new form of performance enhancement with sinister echoes of Nazi Germany's eugenics policies - gene doping

Scientists say it is theoretically possible to interfere with human DNA to boost power and endurance.

Bioethicist Andy Miah said: "If a genetically modified athlete wins the 100m sprint at the London 2012 Games, we won't know - at least not immediately.

"In some years, a test may show that gene doping took place and we will have to confront the possibility of retracting some of these medals."

Gene doping could see athletes injecting lab-fabricated DNA into their bodies through a carrier, like a virus, to stimulate the production of muscle-growing hormones or red blood cells that shuttle oxygen to the muscles.

Don Catlin, a doctor who helped set up the first drug testing lab in the United States, said: "You could take a fully fledged, developed athlete and fiddle around with their genes to make them stronger and better.

"I don't know that it is happening, but then again, nobody will call me up and tell me.

"We are concerned about it because it is a theoretical possibility. We know people will try it and probably are trying it."

The World Anti-Doping Agency added gene doping to its list of prohibited substances and training methods in 2003, and has spent millions of dollars on developing a test.

More than 6,000 blood and urine samples are to be taken at the London Olympics and can now be kept for up to eight years for retrospective testing.

One of those samples belongs to the impossibly talented Ye Shiwen.

Read more about Ye Shiwen at London 2012

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'Sport is war without gunfire': Inside the brutal training factories churning out Chinese champions

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She's a normal 16-year-old who loves reading ­detective stories, painting her mum's nails and ­chatting to pals on her pink mobile phone. Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen may have won Olympic gold in the women's 400m individual medley by smashing more than a second off the world record and swimming the last 50m faster than the men's winner - but really, she's just a natural.