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When Tony Mobley, then dean of the School of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, visited China in 1989, one of his ports of call was Beijing Institute of Physical Education, China’s premier institu-

tion dedicated to the scientific study of sport and physical education. At the time, the institute was inter-ested in upgrading its facilities, and sought assistance from the experts in Indiana. In 2008, HPER formally renewed the long-term relation-ship with a university that in two decades had developed some of the most advanced sports facilities on the planet.

The affiliation with BSU, Beijing Sport University as it was renamed in 1993, has touched many HPER faculty and departments over the years with enduring contacts in kinesiology, sport management, and sport science. It was perhaps inevitable then that the BSU Cham-pion Class program would find a resource in Bloomington. The Champion Class arose out of the national awareness that China was wasting a precious resource. Pre-viously, retired Chinese athletes had few options. Lacking a good academic education, they could not move into professional jobs. At least one Olympic medalist ended up working in a supermarket. With the encouragement of the Beijing Sport University, the Chinese government has begun sending its world-class athletes emeriti to the U.S. and to

From left: Xu Wang, Dan Zhu, Zhong Chen, and Tao Chou, Olympic medalists who are part of the Beijing Sport University’s Champion Class

Chinese Olympic Athletes at IU

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Britain. The goal of these fellow-ships is to give the athletes expo-sure to new training methods and to the language and culture of the host countries. The athletes also are working toward degrees from Beijing Sports University, and can use the experience to collect mate-rial for their theses.

Since fall 2010, four Olympic med-alists have been in residence at IU:

• Zhong Chen, from Jiaozuo in Central China, won gold med-als in taekwondo at the Sydney and Athens Olympics.

• Xu Wang, from Beijing, won a gold medal in wrestling at the Athens Olympics.

• Dan Zhu, from Dalian in Liaon-ing Province, won silver at the Beijing Olympics for rhythmic gymnastics.

• Tao Chou, also from Dalian in Liaoning Province, won silver at the Beijing Olympics for all-round rhythmic gymnastics.

Olympic Gold in Taekwondo

For the first 13 years of her life, Zhong Chen lived a typical school-girl life in the industrial city of Jiaozuo, in the Henan Province in central China. Her mother had been a basketball player, and Zhong was one too, and a good one. A martial arts coach from Beijing Sports University attended one of Zhong’s games. Afterwards, he spoke to her. Zhong remembers the questions vividly, especially one that translates roughly, “Can you work hard?”

The coach must have liked what he heard, for he proposed to Zhong and her parents that she begin

training in Beijing for world-class competition in martial arts. Zhong was ready to go. “My parents were strict, and I thought I could get away from that,” she says. Zhong’s mother secretly hoped that once the university saw how good her daughter was on the basketball court, they would see a better use for her.

If Zhong thought she was escap-ing a strict regimen, she was much mistaken. She became part of a group of six girls whose training began before breakfast each day; the regimen allowed almost no free time and little time for study. Hers was the first generation of athletes preparing to compete in taekwondo. Lacking specialized equipment, she trained initially in her basketball gear. Although the coach reported regularly to her parents, she saw them only a couple times a year. She found this

Zhong Chen winning her gold medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens

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new life very hard at the begin-ning, especially being 400 miles from home, but her work paid off. In three years she had won a world championship in taekwondo. Within a decade of that coach’s visit, Zhong had carried home two Olympic gold medals. All six of the original group became champions in their sport.

When she returns to China, Zhong hopes to become more involved in sport management, applying what she has observed in the U.S. to the training of future Chinese athletes. “The training of young athletes in China has already changed,” Zhong says. “They get more time for study, and more effort is made to give them a balanced educa-tion.” After attending HPER classes and participating in the activities of local taekwondo clubs, Zhong

is convinced that the high level of training that she experienced can be maintained in this balanced environment as long as coaches, teachers, and trainers can keep the children motivated. “If children en-joy the activity, they will spend the

time they need to become good. Sports exercise is good even for children who are not destined for athletic stardom; they too need an environment where they can learn to enjoy the activity.”

Zhong (center) with her mother and son, Chen Chen, at HPER with the IU Taekwondo Club. Chen Chen will likely know a different training regimen than his mother or grandmother knew, partly because of his mother’s efforts to merge the best of Chinese and U.S. training techniques.

HPER is very pleased to host such outstanding women as visiting scholars. The Chinese media and public have followed their careers and now watch to see what they accomplish abroad. Therefore, we are grateful for this opportunity to support these special guests, to garner additional attention for Indiana University in China, and to further deepen our relationship with Beijing Sport University.

—Mohammad Torabi, Interim Dean of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation.

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Zhong’s parents, after 13 years together and 13 years apart, now live with Zhong, her husband, and their young son, in Beijing. Zhong met her husband, a runner and one of the taekwondo training coaches, when he was asked to jog with her as part of her rehabilitation after a major knee injury in 2002. “He found the slow jogging to be boring, but it gave us lots of oppor-tunities to talk,” she says. Asked what they have in mind for their son, Zhong comments that she has seen some indications of talent there, but she will let the boy de-cide. He will surely have training that balances academic and athletic needs. And he will have the free-dom to find what he enjoys doing the most. Still, with his legacy of basketball, running, and Olympic gold in taekwondo and with his mother’s commitment to merging the best of Chinese and U.S. sport management—the world will be watching.

To recognize the tenth anniversary of HPER’s collaboration with the Beijing Sport University (BSU) in 2001, then Associate Dean David Gallahue worked with his Chinese colleagues to organize a 10-day walk along the Great Wall. The 40 HPER faculty and staff who took part (with no IU funding) undertook pre-trip training in preparation for an exploration of sections of the wall that had been long closed to the public. They were joined by 20 of their Chinese counterparts, including BSU Vice President Zhang Wan Zeng, who initially committed to one day but stayed the course and enthusiastically led the way. The event solidified personal as well as institutional connections. As Joel Stager, now IU professor of kinesiology, said, “The Great Wall, something built as a barrier between people, served as the vehicle to bring people together.”

Zhong has spent her time at IU studying sport management. Here she demonstrates her gold-medal skills to IU taekwondo students.

The Great Wall Walk