CRI听力: Guest Coaches Change Games and Culture

Anchor: The ongoing 16th Asian Games have seen some teams pocket medals that are outside their traditional specialty sports. As Su Yi reports from Guangzhou, this can be attributed to guest coaches from the countries those teams are competing against.



Japan's Imura Masayo came to China to coach the women's synchronized swimming team in 2006. Two years later, the team took its first Olympic medal in Beijing.

As a technical consultant for the team at the Asian Games in Guangzhou, Masayo says China already tops Japan in synchronized swimming in Asia. She says she is confident that China will win the gold this time.

More than 20 foreign guest coaches are helping Chinese teams at the Asian Games. Two years ago at the Beijing Olympics, there were 38 of them.

Kim Sangyul from South Korea helped China's men's field hockey team win the silver medal at the Doha Asiad in 2006. Now he is coaching the women's team.

Confident about China's dominance in women's field hockey, Kim says there are some differences between the men's and women's teams such as the members' personalities and running speeds, but not so much in technical and teaming aspects.

Likewise, dozens of Chinese nationals are coaching foreign teams at the Asian Games.

Sun Jianming is one of them.

The coach of the Japanese wushu team says he is serving as a cultural exchange ambassador as well. Sun says he is fulfilled to see wushu included in the Asian Games. The popular sport originated in China, but has deeply influenced other Asian countries.

China has already sent some 2,600 coaches to a total of 124 countries since the 1950s. Some of them have turned their teams into strong opponents challenging China's dominance in some sports like ping pong, women's volleyball and badminton.

But life for them hasn't been all praise and applause. Like other expatriates, loneliness, homesickness, language barriers, culture shock and even sometimes questions from the homeland have distracted them from time to time.

But like wushu coach Sun Jianming says, it is a small price to pay for taking his beloved sport and culture overseas.

For CRI, I'm Su Yi in Guangzhou.