(CBS News) After Chinese diver Wu Minxia and partner He Zi won their sport’s first gold medal of the London Olympics with a dominating performance in the women’s 3-meter synchronized event on Sunday, Wu was more stoic than ecstatic.
“It feels normal,” Wu said in Mandarin. “I really don’t have that many emotions.”
China’s gold medalists He Zi and Wu Minxia pose on the podium after the women’s synchronized 3m springboard diving event at the London 2012 Olympic Games on July 29, 2012 in London. (Credit: MARTIN BUREAU/AFP/GettyImages)
But her parents would drop an emotional bombshell moments later when they told Wu secrets they had kept for several years, according to media reports.
From Yahoo Sports’ Martin Rogers:
“Wu’s parents decided to withhold news of both the death of her grandparents and of her mother’s long battle with breast cancer until after she won the 3-meter springboard in London so as to not interfere with her diving career.
“It was essential to tell this white lie,” said her father Wu Yuming.
Both of Wu’s grandparents died more than a year ago and Wu’s mother has battled breast cancer for eight years. Yet Wu knew nothing until this week.
“Wu called us after her grandmother died, I gritted my teeth and told her: ‘everything’s fine, there aren’t any problems’,” Wu’s father Wu Jueming told the Shanghai Morning Post.
The news has provoked criticism of the win-at-all-costs culture in China, where athletes are groomed from a very young age for gruelling training sessions at Soviet-style sports schools. In the wake of the news about Wu’s family, thousands took to the microblog Sino Weibo to voice their outrage, according to the AFP.
“Apart from making people crazy, our Olympic strategy also makes people lose their humanity,” one online commentator wrote. “Our national sports system is disgusting,” another commenter said.
I admire the so called extreme methods and attitude the Chinese have to delivering success and a winning mentality. This is not just to sports, any wonder why they are on course to be the most powerful economy on earth.
The sad irony is that Nigeria has some of these competitive qualities but somehow it now got channeled into personal selfish interests and the collective will to move the nation forward died a long time ago. Love or hate China they have a winning formula and only 20-30 years ago they were a third world country.