Four years ago, just down the street from the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, Liu Chunhong was heaving discs of metal into the air, just as she had done from the time she was a little girl. By the time I met the Chinese weightlifter, she was already a legend, a double Olympic champion and world-record holder in the 69 kg weight class. Liu stood at the apex of the Chinese state sports system, which had fashioned world champions out of hundreds of thousands of children in government-run sports academies. The goal of this massive enterprise? To bring China international …read more
Source: Time
