Training the athletes

This morning I met with a friend of the magazine's named Wes, who works for the US Olympic Committee. He's a former Olympic weightlifter who in Beijing is in charge of the US training center. I never knew they did this, but the US team in recent years has decided to build its own training center on site at the Summer Olympics because otherwise they have to compete for training time at whatever exists in the Olympic Village. Here in Beijing, they have taken over part of Beijing Normal University (one wonders what the abnormal university looks like...). When I say taken over, I mean taken over.

They worked out a deal before the games to have the university basically build an entire Olympic grounds for them. It was incredibly impressive. They built a swimming pool, a track, a basketball stadium, a 24-Hour fitness gym, and just about anything else you can think of. Round a corner and through the door is a full boxing gym. Behind another door, it's a judo training room. And the USOC even took over a restaurant on the site and uses it to provide meals, huge meals, for the athletes whenever they don't want to eat in the athlete's village. Wes said part of it is psychological so the athletes have some familar food around them, a concept I have already come to completely understand.

The NBA team has been practicing in this gym above for all its games. Wes said they used it to keep them out of the media frenzy, but that professors at the university, who are supposed to be on a semester break, kept finding their way in to accost them for autographs. When I was there, the women's volleyball team was training.

The sheer scope of this complex gives quite an insight into the effort a country like the US puts into its sports programs. How many other countries could possibly afford, or care to invest, that kind of effort into something like this? It's got to be a short list.