Train Long, Lose Shortly.

Last week’s not-so-shocking news that Yao Ming has a fatigue-induced stress fracture in his left foot has generated very little in the way of recriminations in the Chinese state-owned media and sports authorities – and I can only take this as but one more example of the message (and media) restraint and discipline that has been imposed as the Olympics approach. It could have been much different. Over the weekend I received several emails taking me to task for having the nerve to suggest – here – that Yao’s off-season national team duties, combined with his NBA schedule, were the cause of the injury. I didn’t quite put it that way, but I did suggest that there didn’t seem much sense in wearing out Yao’s massive body for a national team that nobody – not even the national team – expects will win a medal.

In either case, Yao’s injury seems to have set off some soul-searching on training methods among China’s sports authorities and their media enablers, as evidenced by a spate of stories that emerged over the weekend questioning whether China’s athletes are over-training. It’s a question that I’ve heard – muttered, quietly – among non-Chinese Olympic trainers, several of whom have told me (hopefully, in some cases) that over-training might be the most serious risk to China’s hopes for medal supremacy in August. Sunday’s South China Morning Post contained a fine feature on this subject [subscriber only, alas], focused primarily on the physical damage wrought on China’s diving team by an intense training regimen pretty much unknown – and not recommended – elsewhere in the world:

A thesis published in the November 2007 edition of Chinese Sports Medicine revealed that 26 of the 184 divers selected for the national team between 2000 and 2006 suffered from serious “retina ailment”, a condition that can lead to blindness. Of the 26 inflicted with the dangerous condition, 20 were 10-metre high-platform specialists, the survey – carried out over six years – claimed. The report made detailed data about the damage wrought on divers by the harsh training regime public for the first time, and was carried out by a joint group of physiologists from the State General Sports Administration and Beijing Tongren Hospital. They blamed excessive pressure on divers’ eyes upon water entry – especially in the higher 10m platform events – which caused an unusually high incident of torn or even detached retinas.

The story continues:

The foreign coaches and team doctors who spoke to the Sunday Morning Post at last week’s World Cup said the problem was unique to China. “The pressure on the eyes jumping from the 10m platform is 850 times higher [than that experienced naturally],” said German team doctor Sabine Krueger.

The article and study acknowledges that genetic and physiological variances can account for susceptibility to career-ending retina damage while leaving little question that China’s draconian training methodology is the key environmental factor inducing the damage:

Most international divers train for 20 hours a week. Chinese divers, at national and provincial level, train for five to six hours a day, six days a week from an early age.

… [T]he mainland doctors’ thesis suggested the young entry level might be doing as much harm as over-training. “We found that more than half of the divers with the injury began training before the age of eight,” the thesis reads. “It suggests those who start practising diving at an early age are more prone to retina injury later in their career.” But recruiting divers at an early age for professional training is one of the crucial cornerstones of China’s supremacy.

 

I don’t want to read too much social significance into the over-training of Yao and the divers. But I’m beginning to believe that one of the most significant themes of the upcoming Olympics will be the negative consequences of over-preparation by China’s authorities. It doesn’t take half a day in Beijing to note how little of these Games are being left to chance, and just how much pressure that places on those individuals – athletes, politicians, volunteers – responsible for achieving perfection, and nothing less.