USOC Works Hard to Keep Up with China
Steve Roushe, the US Olympic Committee Chief of Sports Performance, had come to a startling conclusion after visiting several Chinese Athletic Schools since Beijing won the right the hold the 2008 Summer Games. China's sports scene is rising rapidly, and if the US will not do something about their own athletics group, they may very well get left behind.
USA's prospective Olympians are scattered throughout the country at universities, informal training groups or their homes, a scene quite far from China's spartan-esque measures. China had gone as far as revamping the government funding for its athletes to accommodate sports schools, many of which have promising talents as young as 8 years old, all in the hopes of joining the first Olympics on Chinese soil.
Of course, the USOC officials acknowledge that they can never hope to emulate China's strict athletic academies. However, they levied this by investing $4 million in specific upgrades of US training programs as part of the overall rise of $20 million for Olympic preparations as compared to 2004-- with the goal of keeping up with rival China, who threatened the position of the US as the top of medal standings, a position it had held for the last three Olympic games.
The rivalry includes the competition on who can create a better system- the Chinese have their strict discipline and all for one and one for all training and the Americans have their focused training-- with specific diet and exercise regiments for each individual athlete. The Olympics will decide which method is better in training an athlete.
The USOC had also organized its performance division to provide all national sports with access to experts and doubled the funding for Olympic hopefuls. They've even revamped the athletes diet, finding out more than a thousand recipes for training. They've also invested $2.5 million to replicate said training environment in Beijing, where dozens of sea containers filled with shower curtains to training materials reading for shipping in April
