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A LOOK BACK AT THE CONTROVERSIAL 2008 BEIJING GYMNASTICS TEAM AND THE RACE TO WIN GOLD IN RIO China’s Elite

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Page 1: China documentary

A LOOK BACK AT THE CONTROVERSIAL 2008 BEIJ ING GYMNASTICS TEAM AND

THE RACE TO WIN GOLD IN RIO

China’s Elite

Page 2: China documentary

The price of gold

Page 3: China documentary

Proposed documentary

Beginning: videos from the 2008 China Gymnastics Team. Switch to young children as they train to one day be an Olympic gymnast in the Olympic-driven system which is called by Chinese people “juguo tizhi” which means whole nation regime

Middle: Sydney and Beijing Olympics-allegations of cheating in 2000 and 2008

End: look to Rio with the future of China’s gymnastics

Page 4: China documentary

Age requirement to compete

1997: FIG raised the minimum age to compete to 16 years old

2000: Dong Fangxiao was a member of the Chinese team. They won the Bronze medal. Birthdate listed as: 1983. In 2008 she worked as a technical official during the Beijing Olympics. Birthdate listed as: 1986

FIG investigated and found she was 14 during the 2000 Olympics. IOC upheld this and nullified the bronze medal along with Fangxiao’s individual placement

Her teammate Yang Yun admitted in an interview that she was 14 when she competed, however she was found innocent and was able to keep her bronze medal for uneven bars due to lack of documented evidence (4)

Younger gymnasts are lighter and more fearless-Nellie Kim, five-time Olympic gold medalist for former Soviet Union

Dong Fangxiao during the 2000 Summer Olympics

Page 5: China documentary

2008 Beijing Gymnastics Team

The Summer Olympics were held in Beijing, China

Questions about some members age was raised before the games began

Chinese newspaper profile listed He as 14. Now blocked to view national registry listed He as born in 1994 (1)

Jiang was listed as 14 in Zhejiang Province sports administration (1)

He Kexin, Jiang Yuyuan, Deng Linlin, and Yang Yilin were thought to be underage

Page 6: China documentary

He Kexin won gold for Uneven bars. China won gold for the prestigious team all-around medal. China was ranked 1st overall, winning 11 gold medals in gymnastics

International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) investigated the team over six weeks and determined the documentation confirmed the ages of the members fit the eligibility to compete (2)

"There was strong circumstantial evidence, certainly, but these investigations are not my job. I'm not the police or Interpol. If I find that there was cheating, then I can act”-Bruno Grandi, FIG President (3)

Page 7: China documentary

This article was originally posted on China Daily

It was changed to this during the 2008 Olympics

Proof of falsified information

Page 8: China documentary

The question remains

Did they falsify their ages? Why didn’t China just use girls who could meet the age requirement?

Why is there so much pressure on these girls at such a young age?

What happens to the members of the team after they cannot compete anymore?

Why is there a fascination with China from the western world when other countries have been caught in sport scandals, most notably Lance Armstrong’s doping scandal?

A gymnast practices for Rio at the General Administration of Sport of China

Page 9: China documentary

Chinese athletes training (8)

Chinese athletes post career (7)

Gymnasts train at the Guojian Xuan Lian Zhongju training center and the pressure is high to win gold at the Olympics

“There is enormous pressure coming from the government”-Chinese national coach, Huang Wen Bin

Parents hand their children over to the state and tortuous methods are used to ensure the young gymnasts want to win

Crying is forbidden, four gymnasts sleep in unheated rooms on the same mattress

At Shishahai Sports School 550 handpicked students practice for 3-5 hours a day. Gymnastic students begin training at 4 years old (8)

Chinese diver Wu Minxia’s parents didn’t tell her about her mother’s breast cancer and her grandparents’ deaths because they didn’t want it to affect her training (11)

• “…almost half of 6,000 professional athletes retiring from competition each year end up jobless or without further schooling plan”-China's national news agency Xinhua

• “Nearly 80% of China's 300,000 retired athletes are struggling with joblessness, injury or poverty”-China Sports Daily

• Zhang Shangwu joined the national gymnastics team when he was 12, but after his career ended, he was poor and was spotted begging at a subway station last year (10)

Pressure is on

Page 10: China documentary

Willing to speak out

Fan Ye began sports kindergarten at 6 and retired at 20 in 2008

The government pocketed the majority of Fan’s earnings

From her memoir: After seeing the intensity of Fan's training at Shijiazhuang, her mother told one of her coaches that she regretted putting her daughter into the sports kindergarten. The coach responded: "Do you think she's only your daughter? She's the state property now!” (9)

Ye says if you’re not a world champion, the state won’t help you get an education at a University

Page 11: China documentary

GovernmentJuguo tizhi: whole nation regime. First introduced in 1980 to “channel all available resources to the Olympic games” (13)

It’s been estimated that during the 2004 Athens Olympic games, China spent $103 million to win one gold (12)

The government invests money in many schools where athletes train to hopefully be chosen for the Olympic team. They spend more time training than being educated

Page 12: China documentary

Who to look out for in Rio

China’s young gymnasts are already training for 2016. Here are the names of six potential contenders for the 2016 Olympic Gymnastics team.

Shang ChungsongZeng SiqiHuang HuidinTan Jiaxin Lou NinaLi Yiting

Page 13: China documentary

Why is this important?

Cheating scandals in sports are always going to be relevant. Take recent doping Lance Armstrong scandal for example. There is an interest by the

public in this

It is only a matter of time before members of the 2008 China Gymnastics team are found to have been underage. It took ten years for the IOC to strip

the 2000 team of their medal

Similar documentary: BBC did a documentary on Shanghai Circus School’s training regime. Similar to gymnastics, young children are encouraged to

train vigorously to be number 1 at what they do: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH-jQN3Ln60

Page 14: China documentary

What are my goals/who is my target audience?

• Goals: To create sympathetic characters in the young Chinese gymnasts. They train their whole lives to win gold at the Olympics. If there should be any outrage toward the Chinese gymnastic team, this anger should be toward the coaches/adults who forge their documents and falsify their ages

• My target audience is the Olympic viewers and people who watch sports. Usually the Olympics attract a higher demographic, but during the London 2012 Summer Olympics studies found a younger audience was watching the games. Nearly 70% of children watched the games with their parents (5)

• I plan to reach my target audience (general public) mainly social media. Social media use will continue to grow over the next four years. I will also reach out to NBC because my documentary release would coincide with the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics opening. If they do not want to tie my documentary into their coverage, I will market the documentary as a tie-in to the 2016 Olympics.

Page 15: China documentary

Timeline

It will take a year in pre-production planning and research

It will take at least two years to produce the film. I would like to be finished with it by early 2016

It will take 4 months to edit the film in post-production

I will release it when the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics begin