In 1936, Hitler’s Germany finished with 11 golds and 33 total medals more than the next best - USA. As we inch closer to Beijing, we realise how real the USA versus China battle is going to be.

Every sport has the Chinese imprint on it now. As 2008 draws closer, the imprint grows bigger. There was the world record in 110 meter hurdles a few days back. Now, it is the turn of tennis. Tennis has already seen the Chinese women take the doubles at two earlier grand slams this season - Australian Open and Wimbledon. Now, they Chinese are raising the bar in singles as well.

As CNN reports:

China will now play in the eight-team World Group in 2007 while twice champions Germany were relegated to the second tier of the team competition.

The victory was another first in a breakthrough year in which Li became the first Chinese player to reach the singles quarterfinals at a grand slam and Zheng Jie and Yan Zi secured the country’s first major titles in the women’s doubles at the Australian Open and Wimbledon.

That Germany is being replaced by China in the world group bears symbolism more than any thing else. The Olympics have always been the global stage where political statements have been made as this piece from The Economist [Via India Uncut] talked on among other things:

Over its long history, success at the Olympics has usually been a fairly accurate measure of global political power. Although the world now remembers the snub that Jesse Owens delivered to Nazi theories of racial superiority, the Germans came top of the Olympic medal table in 1936, reflecting the Nazi regime’s growing power. During the cold war, the United States and the Soviet Union repeatedly struggled to gain a symbolic victory, by winning the most medals at the Olympics. Already a similar, politically charged battle for supremacy between America and China looks likely in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

If you keep your eyes and ears open, the results have started showing for China. It was one thing to achieve supremacy in an era when sport wasn’t as competitive, hence standards not as tough in 1936. It is a completely different ball game to compete against a super power like USA in the sporting arena - a country which has been very much unbeatable. That is essentially China’s challenge in the world stage as well, isn’t it? To compete with the best in the world markets in products by reducing the cost of production while mass producing as good if not better goods?

History has shown - what you do at the world stage, you do it first at the Olympics. So, 2008 will be a time to make statements. The process was started when the athletes and sports persons were nurtured. The results have already started flowing in.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 16th, 2006 at 6:29 pm and is filed under Olympics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.