Corruption scandal hits Chinese diving
Tuesday, 13th October 2009 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)
Quotes below are all translated from Chinese by a China Sports Today editor. The original Chinese source for this story is at Ce.cn (ChinaEconomic.net).China's national games haven't even officially started yet, but they are already the backdrop for an ugly scandal in one of the country's most treasured sports. According to domestic media reports, a diving judge resigned in the middle of competition, saying she could no longer take part in a competition that she asserts is a complete sham.
The official reason for her departure was illness, particularly a cardiovascular ailment, but the referee told Jiebao Lianmeng she was quitting because the competitions are fixed.
"I am leaving early, not only because I am sick, but also because I'm fed up with the shadiness in diving this year," said the referee, given the pseudonym of Ma Ming by the media. "To my surprise, all of the gold medals are decided internally ahead of time."
Did a corrupt system give Zhou Luxin one gold medal and rob him of another?
According to ChinaEconomic.net, on October 10 "Ma" told a reporter who she believed would win the next four gold medals in the national games. All of her picks turned out to be correct--He Chong in the men's 3 meters; Wang Hao and Hong Lai in the women's 10-meter synchro; Wu Xia and Chen Qinqin in the women's 3-meter synchro; Zhou Luxin in the men's 10 meters.
The woman behind the fixed results, according to "Ma," is Zhou Jihong, the head of the diving federation and deputy director for Chinese aquatics. According to "Ma," she has enough power to subtly let her wishes be known and then sit back and watch the results play out the way she designed.
In a national games press conference, Zhou insisted that the judge quit only because of illness and was quick to dismiss the allegations:
"Whether it's international competition, or Olympics, world championships, whatever, before the competition there are always predictions. It is normal for some of these predictions to come true."
In addition to the four results listed above, "Ma" also pointed to the men's 10-meter synchro event as an example of competition fixing:
"The men's 10-meter synchro final is an obvious example. Lin Yue [林跃] and Cao Yuan's [曹缘] performance was clearly inferior to Zhou Luxin [周吕鑫] and Wang Jiankai [王建凯], but the victory was awarded to Lin and his partner, because this competition was already decided, and it couldn't be changed. Lin Yue had a pulled abdominal muscle, so throughout the competition his performance was mediocre. In the preliminaries, he and Cao Yuan were only in sixth place. But on the day of the finals, Lin and Cao did a dive that was obviously not good, but they still got a score that was good enough for a win over Zhou and his partner."
Though "Ma" asserts that Zhou Jihong has the final say in meet results now, apparently she hasn't always gotten her way. In 2005, "diving prince" Tian Liang mounted a comeback of sorts at the National Games. After the 2004 Olympics in Athens, in which he won a gold and a bronze medal, Tian Liang—then the boyfriend of "diving princess" Guo Jingjing--was kicked off the national team for putting too much energy into commercial projects. The disgraced Tian Liang won a gold medal at the games, and according to "Ma," a 55-year-old veteran who worked that event, his win went against the wishes of Zhou Jihong.
Zhou Jihong
At the same meet, "Ma" also says that she and the other judges defied Zhou Jihong's orders in awarding the women's 10-meter synchro gold to a pair from Hunan, "Ma's" home province. "She said it was because of my officiating."
Asked for concrete evidence of the corruption, "Ma" replied:
"I don't have any concrete evidence. Because if she did this kind of thing, she'd have to talk to all of the judges, which would give the impression that she actually doesn't have too much influence. The scary thing is how if she so much as slightly reveals her intentions, someone will take care of everything for her. As an official at these national games, I have more than once heard another referee say: 'This gold medal the leader already decided must be given to so-and-so.' Currently in the Chinese diving world, only Zhou Jihong can make these decisions."
Zhou Luxin image: Xinhua
Zhou Jihong image: News.QQ
Tags: corruption, diving, National Games
Dusting off Beijing's Olympic venues
Tuesday, 13th October 2009 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)
It's rare that venues built for the 2008 Beijing Olympics actually host events—but in the past week, three of these white elephants were actually in use. The China Open tennis tournament came to the Olympic Green Tennis Center from October 2-11; the Bird's Nest played host to a Zhang Yimou production of the Italian opera Turandot on Oct. 6 and 7; and the NBA brought a preseason game to Wukesong Basketball Arena—a facility that the league designed and now operates.Here's a quick look at each of the events:
Wukesong Arena, October 11, 2009
NBA Games at Wukesong Basketball Arena
The Denver Nuggets played the Indiana Pacers in the second NBA preseason game played here. As expected, the NBA put on a good show—Carmelo Anthony poured in 45 points; breakdancers, cheerleaders and mascots kept the crowd in their seats during breaks; and hoops activities (sponsored, of course) and a small NBA retail outlet continued the action in the arena's outer ring.
Wukesong is decades ahead of any arena used by the Chinese Basketball Association—the seats are comfortable, the jumbotron is jumbo, it actually has built in concession stands, and I doubt that "benchwarmer" will be a literal term here in the winter.
A common sight outside Beijing sports venues, scalpers were hard at work.
Its 18,000 seats were nearly all taken Sunday, but the event still seemed to suffer from some of the ticketing woes faced by other sporting events in China. In a country full of NBA fans, and a city of 17.4 million people, there should be no empty seats for the only NBA game that will happen here this year. Face values on tickets being sold on the street right before the game ranged from 600 to 2,800 yuan, but scalpers offered steep discounts. Asking prices (before any haggling) for those two ticket prices were 200 and 1,000 yuan.
I'll save an examination of the problem with getting butts in seats in China for another post, but it's safe to say that any money that the NBA is making in China does not come from ticket sales. But they do entertainment with a flair and on a scale rarely seen in China, and an event like this is primarily for branding and sponsor exposure.
On another note, what was Mike Dunleavy Jr. thinking? Does Beijing have a secret Silk Market for Blind People where he had this suit made?
China Open at Olympic Tennis Center
The China Open came to Beijing for the sixth year in a row (its history reaches back to 1993, and includes events in Shanghai). Being on the post-season Asia circuit keeps it pretty low-profile, but big purses for both the men and the women this year attracted some big names. Novak Djokovic and Svetlana Kuznetsova cruising to the men's and women's titles. Djokovic took home $500,000 for his win, and Kuznetsova $775,500. The event lacked marquee matchups in its late stages, a common problem at the Asian tournaments where the biggest stars tend to lack motivation.
Taking advantage of some of that laziness was Zhang Shuai, who beat world No. 1 Dinara Safina in the second round before losing to Marion Bartoli. Overall, China's women had a strong showing, with the best performance coming from Peng Shuai and Taiwan's Su-Wei Hseih, who took the women's doubles crown.
In singles, Peng Shuai beat Jelena Jankovic and Maria Sharapova to make it to the quarterfinals, where she lost to Nadia Petrova. Li Na went out in the third round to Elena Dementieva, and Zheng Jie lost to eventual champ Kuznetsova in the first round. Full results are available at ChinaOpen.com.
As noted in this earlier post on the event, the matches were pretty poorly attended but the 30-yuan grounds tickets attracted crowds that enjoyed concessions and interactive entertainment provided by the sponsors. The tournament was heavily promoted through ads on CCTV-5 (China's sports channel) and in various sports publications, as well as billboards all over Beijing. Despite this, and the fact that it kicked off on a holiday weekend with great weather, Beijingers stayed away in droves.
Curiously, event organizers seem to think that a brand new stadium will somehow spike attendance. "The existing facilities cannot meet the needs of a commercial event," said China Open senior organizer Zhang Yabin, according to a recent piece in the Washington Post (New court shows ambitions of revamped China Open). The piece quotes another event organizer as saying that sponsorship (from the likes of Mercedes, Kappa and Sony Ericcson) accounted for 70 percent of revenue, whereas 50 or 60 percent would be a healthier target.
Turandot at the Bird's Nest
The most expensive and most celebrated of all of the Olympic venue constructions, the Bird's Nest is also the games' most embarrassingly dormant showpiece. Talk of bringing Chinese Soccer League games there broke down because, well, the league is famously mediocre. "We don't want to put any shame on the Bird's Nest," said Luo Ning, vice president of the company that owns Beijing Guo'an of the CSL, according to this translation in a Reuters story.
Since the closing ceremony of the 2008 Olympics, the Bird's Nest has hosted a Jackie Chan and Friends concert last May (apparently, shame was not an issue anymore), and the Italian Super Cup Final, a soccer match between Inter Milan and Lazio on the one-year anniversary of the 2008 opening ceremony.
The latest event to hit this 91,000-seat stadium was a production of the Italian opera Turandot, directed by Zhang Yimou, who was also responsible for the opening ceremony. Blogging for The Beijinger, Anthony Tao sounded pretty underwhelmed (Turandot Turn-off). Opera, it seems, is not best enjoyed in a stadium with a red Olympic track between the audience and the stage.
Tags: Bird's Nest, China Open, Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers, NBA, tennis, Wukesong