Chinese sports enthusiasts and leaders are gradually coming to terms to their athletes’ current medal haul during the 2016 Rio Olympic Games as Great Britain comes close to replacing China in second place.
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“You’re kidding me? The country which has never finished above China is about to”, state news agency Xinhua said on its official English-language Twitter account on Monday, alongside a photo of the medals tally.
Team China is also barely keeping the second spot in the overall number of medals as Great Britain shows real grit and earns a total of 50 medals which is 1 medal short of what Chinese athletes now has, based on official medal tally from NBC Olympics.
“People can not but ponder – what on earth is up with them?” it wrote.
The gymnastics competition at the 2016 Olympic Games concluded on Tuesday.
According to the latest medal tally, the U.S. leads in the gold medal haul with 28, followed by Great Britain at 19 and China is only third with 17.
The nationalistic state-run newspaper Global Times – which has previously dismissed Britain as an “old declining empire” whose “national strength can not be placed in the same rank as China now” – tried to keep spirits up yesterday with an article headlined “Happy Without Gold: Chinese public unfazed by sluggish medal winning”.
Jade Jones claimed gold in taekwondo in London and begins the defence of her title on Thursday, while Alistair Brownlee is aiming for similar in the triathlon on Thursday afternoon. He was the London Olympic champion in both events.
In the men’s synchronised three-metre springboard diving, Britain ended the eight-year reign of China, who took bronze. Its domination of badminton was also shaken when its mixed doubles pairs and second-ranked women’s doubles pair were eliminated.
“It doesn’t matter how many gold medals we have, as long as all the athletes can come home safely”, posted an Olympics fan over China’s Twitter-like microblogging platform, Sina Weibo. The country did not participate in the Olympics from 1956 up to including 1980. “The plan continues but is not as vigorous as then”. State media and Internet users had already started to go easy on the athletes, who are cultivated through a sophisticated government-sponsored sports school system, after the medal haul trickled in the first few days of the Olympics.
“Screw you (China), not only have you fallen behind in gold, but you’re actually soon about to lose the medal count to an EU-quitting kingdom” wrote one, adding: “The General Administration of Sports should commit harakiri and apologise”.
Fu Yuanhui has become a social media celebrity thanks to her candid and humorous pool-side interviews on topics from periods to boys.
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“What we chase now is the gold standard Fu Yuanhui reflects in her humour and innocence”.
