The American Fort in China

ARTICLE: PEKING 2008- THE GREAT POWER

The American Fort

The American team invests 2 million euros on renting a university

Pepo Clavet, who is Tommy Robredo’s trainer, lives in an apartment more than an hour away from the Olympic Village; he has been without a hot water supply during the day and he has had to convince one of the trainers who shares the place with him to sleep in the living room: there is no more space in there. The U.S Olympic Team, which is made up of almost four hundred athletes of 22 different disciplines, doesn’t have that problem. It has spent more then three million dollars (2 million euros) during six weeks on using the University of Peking’s facilities, which has been changed into an opulent center and…

a high security fort.

“It’s fantastic,” says Samantha Peszek with a perfect smile, and who is a member of the gymnastics team and the 2007 world champion; “we are all in a small building. It enables us be together under conditions that people don’t understand. They have paper, felt-tip pens and a lot of decorative things made of U.S. motifs for us. We have hung them all in the bedroom. We train with vaulting horses and other thinks similar to ours in USA. You feel at home in a place like this.”

Before getting to the rooms decorated with flags, before meeting the athletes, training or playing video games, before the talk about their hamburger menus and complaints about the bathrooms, the entrance to the university emerges from the chaotic traffic with the promise of an adventure.

The U.S.A. is protecting itself from China. The area is cordoned-off and full of Public Security Office signs. There are twenty meters of sidewalk from McDonalds to the university, and there is so little space and volunteers wearing military or police uniforms, all unarmed. “It’s for the Games”, says one of the guards, “We come here at 6am, we work seven hours and then we are relieved. That is China all over!. Nobody is surprised that the security measures, demanded by the International Olympic Committee, had forced the closure with a barrier of the entrance of the Liyun Apartment Hotel, according to the Americans.

Beyond the security checks, kindly conducted by volunteers, another day in the USA is hidden. The athletes live in the Village and they travel by bus while their coaches, physios and training partners are spread among 29 rooms in the teachers’ building and many others in the apartment hotel. They have two athletics tracks, one field of artificial grass and one of natural grass. They have a diving area. Also, the Quiujiduan gym, whose construction was finished in July, when 18 macro containers were sent out from the USA to Peking, with vaulting horses, mats etc. … Just one detail is lacking: some of bathrooms embarrassed athletes with painful knees too, aren’t western.

“The rooms are big: we are four to a room”, says one of the members of the wrestling team: “the food is one hundred percent American: rice, vegetables, much meat and nothing cold. There isn’t anything Chinese. It’s not too heavy or greasy … there is only healthy food”. And it is well labeled: some of it has arrived from the home country after passing strict controls. However, the meat isn’t the only thing that is watched. The press is under similar conditions. The journalists must ask for a special pass one day before their visit. Televisions are not allow to broadcast “anything” live from the complex. Neither can anything inside the facilities be recorded. The press room is in the restaurant La Amistad, according to a sign.

China, like a good friend, has given everything to USA. Including a million dollar house 15 minutes away from the Village.