So I’ve been in Beijing for 2.5 days now and am absolutely loving it. I’m staying at the hotel on Beijing Sports University. The university itself is NOTHING like anything in the U.S. It’s actually like a sports factory…producing the best coaches and athletes for China using every possible resource available. Since discussion of that is better suited to ELITETRACK, I’ll post laster today about the university itself, the facility and the great coaches and administrators I’ve met. So far the trip has been amazing. My hosts are great and I’m enjoying everything about it. The totalitarianism and overbearing government control that is so commonly mentioned in the West about China and its sports programs is no where to be found. I kinda feel like a kid in a candy store here. The only things I can relate to it is when I was 24 and took my first USATF funded trip to help out with elite shot putters at a meet at Stanford. I thought that was the most amazing thing in the world at the time to be paid to work with elite athletes. I remember being SOOO excited to be traveling across the country to do that excited to be getting paid to do something I would have gladly done for free at the time. Within a couple months though I was doing that on a very regular basis and while I still enjoyed every moment of it it had lost it’s wonderment. Now that feeling is back.
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