China continues rowing coxswain craze

By Melissa Bray

The goal of China’s reality TV Olympic coxswain competition was to make the Olympic dream accessible to all people. So far it has succeeded. The first series is complete. Seventeen episodes, each broadcast three times including a prime-time afternoon slot, has captivated watchers of China’s premier television station, CCTV and narrowed the number of Olympic coxswain hopefuls from 20 000 down to 20.

Lawyers, students, gym instructors, teachers, the whole range signed up for an opportunity at the Olympic dream. They came from cities, towns and country farms. Some quit their jobs. Some are business owners that shut down their businesses to take part. Some joined as couples, most as individuals. One entire family entered.

Wang Chen is one of the final 20. Chen, 24, is a fitness instructor from the Shan Dong Province. She had heard about rowing before the competition but never tried it. Chen quit her job to take part in the competition and in one part of the competition she competed against one of the national team coxswains and won.

Chen is overwhelmed by her new “star” status. “People now recognise me on the street!” But Chen knows there is more to do to win.

“It will be very hard, but I would feel very lucky. It will be a big highlight of my life.”

Coming from China’s third largest city of Tianjin, with10 million people, Yu Jian Hua made it into the group of 80 contestants in the first round. The 59 year old lawyer did not know rowing before entering but had been involved in many other sports.

Hua says the show had a big impression on him. “I think that the Olympics in Beijing will be a very big thing in China. We have the opportunity of being close to the games. You talk about “sport for all” – I am from the ‘all’.”

As a lawyer Hua was able to take some spare time so he did not need to quit his job. However, Hua moved from Tianjin to the Yunnan Province where the competition took place at Yang Zong Lake. Although Hua only lasted two weeks in the competition, the impact on him will be life-long.

“I feel so much closer now to the Olympic Games,” said Hua. “I have made young friends through this competition and we exchanged our opinions about the Olympics, about sports and about life in general.”

Hua now goes back to his job.

The final 20 contestants include 12 men and eight women. These 20 are all volunteers and the pride of success, if they do well, is all that they want. For this final round they will live, eat and train with the national team – on top of their ever growing list of media commitments. This group will then be narrowed down to four.

The final series will start filming in May and the four final contestants – two men and two women – will be selected in August 2007. These four will not take part in the Olympic qualification regatta as part of this year’s World Rowing Championships in Munich, at the end of August. There will still be much training to be done before they can compete on the national team, so current national team coxswains will be used. The four will then train with the national team with the two Olympic coxswains being decided – as long as China qualifies both a men’s and women’s eight – just before the Beijing Olympics.

So far the Chinese Rowing Association is happy with the ability and competency level of the contestants and the federation expects that it will help Chinese rowing in the future.

Current national team coxswain Na Zheng is one of the final eight remaining women. Zheng was the coxswain for China’s women’s eight that finished fourth at the Athens Olympics, but is undergoing the same challenges as all other contestants.

The Olycox show has been picked up internationally with American stations CNN and NBC showing reports as well as BBC (Great Britain) and NHK (Japan) as has the Wall Street Journal and US National Public Radio.

In China the programme recently won the award for Best Sports Programme for 2006 (voted by the people).

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