Beijing Olympics Quotes

Boycotting the Beijing Games in the name of Tibet seemed as logical to him as shunning the Salt Lake City Olympics to protest America’s treatment of the Cherokee.

For years before the Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps won the gold at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, he followed the same routine at every race. He arrived two hours early.1 He stretched and loosened up, according to a precise pattern: eight hundred mixer, fifty freestyle, six hundred kicking with kickboard, four hundred pulling a buoy, and more. After the warm-up he would dry off, put in his earphones, and sit—never lie down—on the massage table. From that moment, he and his coach, Bob Bowman, wouldn’t speak a word to each other until after the race was over. At forty-five minutes before the race he would put on his race suit. At thirty minutes he would get into the warm-up pool and do six hundred to eight hundred meters. With ten minutes to go he would walk to the ready room. He would find a seat alone, never next to anyone. He liked to keep the seats on both sides of him clear for his things: goggles on one side and his towel on the other. When his race was called he would walk to the blocks. There he would do what he always did: two stretches, first a straight-leg stretch and then with a bent knee. Left leg first every time. Then the right earbud would come out. When his name was called, he would take out the left earbud. He would step onto the block—always from the left side. He would dry the block—every time. Then he would stand and flap his arms in such a way that his hands hit his back. Phelps explains: “It’s just a routine. My routine. It’s the routine I’ve gone through my whole life. I’m not going to change it.” And that is that. His coach, Bob Bowman, designed this physical routine with Phelps. But that’s not all. He also gave Phelps a routine for what to think about as he went to sleep and first thing when he awoke. He called it “Watching the Videotape.”2 There was no actual tape, of course. The “tape” was a visualization of the perfect race. In exquisite detail and slow motion Phelps would visualize every moment from his starting position on top of the blocks, through each stroke, until he emerged from the pool, victorious, with water dripping off his face. Phelps didn’t do this mental routine occasionally. He did it every day before he went to bed and every day when he woke up—for years. When Bob wanted to challenge him in practices he would shout, “Put in the videotape!” and Phelps would push beyond his limits. Eventually the mental routine was so deeply ingrained that Bob barely had to whisper the phrase, “Get the videotape ready,” before a race. Phelps was always ready to “hit play.” When asked about the routine, Bowman said: “If you were to ask Michael what’s going on in his head before competition, he would say he’s not really thinking about anything. He’s just following the program. But that’s not right. It’s more like his habits have taken over. When the race arrives, he’s more than halfway through his plan and he’s been victorious at every step. All the stretches went like he planned. The warm-up laps were just like he visualized. His headphones are playing exactly what he expected. The actual race is just another step in a pattern that started earlier that day and has been nothing but victories. Winning is a natural extension.”3 As we all know, Phelps won the record eight gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. When visiting Beijing, years after Phelps’s breathtaking accomplishment, I couldn’t help but think about how Phelps and the other Olympians make all these feats of amazing athleticism seem so effortless. Of course Olympic athletes arguably practice longer and train harder than any other athletes in the world—but when they get in that pool, or on that track, or onto that rink, they make it look positively easy. It’s more than just a natural extension of their training. It’s a testament to the genius of the right routine.

By far, though, the best celebrity encounter either of us ever had belonged to Barbara. She met LeBron James at the Beijing Olympics, and after some joking around, he passed along his number. Henry and I had visions of a Bush-James basketball dynasty. We could see ourselves living comfortably in their guesthouse . . . But just like Justin Timberlake unplugged at the White House, it was not to be. Or, to quote U2, “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.

As early as November 1966, the Red Guard Corps of Beijing Normal University had set their sights on the Confucian ancestral home in Qufu County in Shandong Province. Invoking the language of the May Fourth movement, they proceeded to Qufu, where they established themselves as the Revolutionary Rebel Liaison State to Annihilate the Old Curiosity Shop of Confucius. Within the month they had totally destroyed the Temple of Confucius, the Kong Family Mansion, the Cemetery of Confucius (including the Master’s grave), and all the statues, steles, and relics in the area... In January 1967 another Red Guard unit editorialized in the People’s Daily: To struggle against Confucius, the feudal mummy, and thoroughly eradicate . . . reactionary Confucianism is one of our important tasks in the Great Cultural Revolution. And then, to make their point, they went on a nationwide rampage, destroying temples, statues, historical landmarks, texts, and anything at all to do with the ancient Sage... The Cultural Revolution came to an end with Mao’s death in 1976. In 1978 Deng Xiaoping (1904–97) became China’s paramount leader, setting China on a course of economic and political reform, and effectively bringing an end to the Maoist ideal of class conflict and perpetual revolution. Since 2000, the leadership in Beijing, eager to advance economic prosperity and promote social stability, has talked not of the need for class conflict but of the goal of achieving a “harmonious society,” citing approvingly the passage from the Analects, “harmony is something to be cherished” (1.12). The Confucius compound in Qufu has been renovated and is now the site of annual celebrations of Confucius’s birthday in late September. In recent years, colleges and universities throughout the country—Beijing University, Qufu Normal University, Renmin University, Shaanxi Normal University, and Shandong University, to name a few—have established Confucian study and research centers. And, in the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics, the Beijing Olympic Committee welcomed guests from around the world to Beijing with salutations from the Analects, “Is it not a joy to have friends come from afar?” and “Within the fours seas all men are brothers,” not with sayings from Mao’s Little Red Book. Tellingly, when the Chinese government began funding centers to support the study of the Chinese language and culture in foreign schools and universities around the globe in 2004—a move interpreted as an ef f ort to expand China’s “soft power”—it chose to name these centers Confucius Institutes... The failure of Marxism-Leninism has created an ideological vacuum, prompting people to seek new ways of understanding society and new sources of spiritual inspiration. The endemic culture of greed and corruption—spawned by the economic reforms and the celebration of wealth accompanying them—has given rise to a search for a set of values that will address these social ills. And, crucially, rising nationalist sentiments have fueled a desire to fi nd meaning within the native tradition—and to of f set the malignant ef f ects of Western decadence and materialism. Confucius has thus played a variety of roles in China’s twentieth and twenty-first centuries. At times praised, at times vilified, he has been both good guy and bad guy. Yet whether good or bad, he has always been somewhere on the stage. These days Confucius appears to be gaining favor again, in official circles and among the people. But what the future holds for him and his teachings is difficult to predict. All we can say with any certainty is that Confucius will continue to matter.

When sex is the means of exploitation, there are three methods. The first is seduction that leads to the direct theft of secrets. For example, Ian Clement, deputy to the then mayor of London, Boris Johnson, was caught in a honey trap while in Beijing for the 2008 Olympics. He was approached by an attractive woman, agreed to have a couple of drinks, then invited her up to his hotel room.40 There he passed out, apparently drugged, and woke to find his room ransacked for documents and the contents of his BlackBerry downloaded. A top aide to Prime Minister Gordon Brown fell for the same trap in the same year.41 The second method is seduction that leads to blackmail, using compromising photographs. This classic honey trap (meiren ji, literally ‘beautiful person plan’) was perfected by the Russians.42 Though the method is not uncommon, cases rarely come to light.43 In 2017 the former deputy head of MI6, Nigel Inkster, said that China’s agencies were using honey traps more often.44 In 2016 reports suggested that the Dutch ambassador to Beijing had been entrapped.

Jason Nemer (IG: @jasonnemer, acroyoga.org) is a cofounder of AcroYoga, which blends the spiritual wisdom of yoga, the loving-kindness of Thai massage, and the dynamic power of acrobatics. Jason was a two-time U.S. Junior National champion in sports acrobatics and represented the U.S. at the World Championships in Beijing in 1991. He performed acrobatics in the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Olympics. AcroYoga now has certified teachers in more than 60 countries and hundreds of thousands of practitioners.

Sheba and Dedan” (areas that were in what is now known as Saudi Arabia) and the merchants of Europe and its “young lions,”  implying Canada, Australia and, yes, the United States, will quickly challenge Russia and the invading Muslim nations and ask: “Art thou come to take a spoil…to take a great spoil?” (Ezekiel 38:13 KJV). It is of more than passing interest that centuries ago, a Jewish Prophet pointed to the identity of the nations that will object to such a future invasion, and that the list includes the primary nations one would expect today would raise the loudest objections. No one should doubt that the Russian bear will be capable of such an invasion. In this regard, one also should not forget that Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, exquisitely timing the invasion for the first day of the Olympics in China, as the world’s attention was diverted, with the leaders of Russia and the United States both seated a few feet away from each other in the grandstands in Beijing.

Back in Beijing, it was 9:56 A.M.—four minutes before the race’s start—and Phelps stood behind his starting block, bouncing slightly on his toes. When the announcer said his name, Phelps stepped onto the block, as he always did before a race, and then stepped down, as he always did. He swung his arms three times, as he had before every race since he was twelve years old. He stepped up on the blocks again, got into his stance, and, when the gun sounded, leapt. Phelps knew that something was wrong as soon as he hit the water. There was moisture inside his goggles. He couldn’t tell if they were leaking from the top or bottom, but as he broke the water’s surface and began swimming, he hoped the leak wouldn’t become too bad.4.18 By the second turn, however, everything was getting blurry. As he approached the third turn and final lap, the cups of his goggles were completely filled. Phelps couldn’t see anything. Not the line along the pool’s bottom, not the black T marking the approaching wall. He couldn’t see how many strokes were left. For most swimmers, losing your sight in the middle of an Olympic final would be cause for panic. Phelps was calm. Everything else that day had gone according to plan. The leaking goggles were a minor deviation, but one for which he was prepared. Bowman had once made Phelps swim in a Michigan pool in the dark, believing that he needed to be ready for any surprise. Some of the videotapes in Phelps’s mind had featured problems like this. He had mentally rehearsed how he would respond to a goggle failure. As he started his last lap, Phelps estimated how many strokes the final push would require—nineteen or twenty, maybe twenty-one—and started counting. He felt totally relaxed as he swam at full strength. Midway through the lap he began to increase his effort, a final eruption that had become one of his main techniques in overwhelming opponents. At eighteen strokes, he started anticipating the wall. He could hear the crowd roaring, but since he was blind, he had no idea if they were cheering for him or someone else. Nineteen strokes, then twenty. It felt like he needed one more. That’s what the videotape in his head said. He made a twenty-first, huge stroke, glided with his arm outstretched, and touched the wall. He had timed it perfectly. When he ripped off his goggles and looked up at the scoreboard, it said “WR”—world record—next to his name. He’d won another gold. After the race, a reporter asked what it had felt like to swim blind. “It felt like I imagined it would,” Phelps said. It was one additional victory in a lifetime full of small wins.4.19

From age 14 through the Beijing Olympics, Phelps trained seven days a week, 365 days a year. He figured that by training on Sundays he got a 52-training-day advantage on the competition. He spent up to six hours in the water each day. “Channeling his energy is one of his great strengths,” said Bowman. Not to oversimplify, but it’s not a stretch to say that Phelps channeled all of his energy into one discipline that developed into one habit—swimming daily.

This book is really about the making of a great leader. In my own research and writings over many decades, I have concluded the following about leadership: You can neither manufacture nor can you buy leadership. You must earn it. Great leaders are great doers. They have a knack of organizing and inspiring the followers. Sometimes, they even generate cult-like loyalty. When the followers are ready, the leaders show up. Therefore, in times of crisis, uncertainty and chronic dissatisfaction, unexpected people become leaders. This was the case with Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. In short, ordinary people become extraordinary leaders. Great leaders are driven by purpose and passion. They derive boundless energy from their purpose and passion. To them, leadership is all about people. Management is all about grit and determination. Great leaders not only promise the future but deliver it. Great leaders are great architects. Like good architects, they imagine building something unique, enduring, and inspiring. Examples include the Pyramids, the ancient temples, churches and mosques; more recently, the Opera House in Sydney; the Olympic Stadium (Bird’s Nest) in Beijing; and Putrajaya, the new capital of Malaysia. There are three universal qualities of all great leaders: passion, caring, and capability. This is also true of great teachers.

For example, both the 2004 Athens Olympic Games and 2008 Beijing Olympics Games used Israeli companies to secure the events because Israel had positioned itself as the one of the best and more reliable providers of crowd management techniques, command and control rooms, and urban security. Alongside protecting nuclear plants, airport security, and law enforcement, among many other areas where surveillance and tight security were viewed as essential, Israeli expertise or equipment were routinely the answers to almost any security question.

I’m talking about people who live in some of our most affluent cities,’ says O’Casey, ‘but they’re driven to live below the earth. People who—for whatever reason—aren’t welcome on the surface: homeless people, addicts, the HIV positive. There are subterranean communities all over the world, in catacombs, sewers and abandoned metros. The Tunnel People in Las Vegas, the Empire of the Dead in Paris, the Rat Tribe in Beijing. A lot of them are proper societies, with electricity and phone lines, even churches and restaurants sometimes. The Rat Tribe in Beijing are mostly migrant workers, some of them brought in to build for the Olympics. The only place they can afford to live is underground, in tunnels and old air-raid shelters.

Which leaves many towns in southern Florida no choice but to dig their sand from inland quarries and haul it to the coast one roaring, diesel-spewing truck at a time. Tourists and locals hate the noise and traffic, and county officials hate the extra cost, which can be easily double that of dredged sand. But it does have some advantages. The inland mines, with their elaborate sorting and washing machines, can deliver sand of a precise spec—the exact size, shape, and color county officials deem appropriate for the beach. Beach town residents and tourists alike are very particular about the color and consistency of their beaches. The sugary white-sand beach has become the global standard of perfection, and any resort falling short of it loses points. (That’s nothing compared to the fussiness of Olympic beach volleyball players. To make sure their bare feet come into contact only with grains of just the right size and shape, sand was brought in from Hainan Island for the 2008 Beijing Games, and from a quarry in Belgium for the 2004 Athens Games.)15 “You pump sand from the ocean floor, you don’t know what you’re getting,” said Eastman. That’s not exactly true; sea sand is examined closely to make sure it is suitable for a given beach before the regulatory agencies will allow it to be dredged for nourishment. But land-mined sand can be sorted, sifted, and cleaned to a uniform standard. The grains that Eastman was emplacing were all about the size of a salt grain, all the same silver gray, unadulterated with stones or shell fragments. Their color was approved using the Munsell color order system, a visual index of hues created in 1915. The sand is tested at the mine, at every 3,000 tons, and every 500 yards on the beach after it’s in place to make sure it’s up to spec. The waves will gradually mix in shells and other organic matter, so in a few months it won’t look as obviously artificial as it does now.