China’s Olympic weightlifting ‘gold medal farming’ revealed by US lifter on Instagram
- Posts showing children as young as six being recruited go viral, showcasing rural strongholds powering Chinese domination of the sport
A weightlifter’s video of Chinese children as young as six being trained to be future champions has lifted the lid on the rural power behind the country’s Olympic domination of the sport.
American lifter Hillary Tran journeyed to northern China last month to learn first-hand how the next generation of stars were being recruited and moulded by a nation that won seven of the 10 gold medals available at the Tokyo Games three years ago.
The 31-year-old’s Instagram posts of the process went viral, and she plans to return in August to get further insight into the rural schools that drive what one social media user called “gold medal farming”.
“Personally, I wish I had a path like that when I was younger,” Tran said. “I’d say that’s the same for a lot of American athletes – you fall off and it’s very much a self-funded sport [where] you don’t make much money.”
In the first video, Tran follows China weightlifting coach Lu Xiantao – who scouted 2016 Rio Olympics gold medallist Deng Wei and world champion Zhang Jie – to a school in a town in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region, in the country’s northwest.
