The Sports Factor

China's Olympic preparations are on the bell lap, so how's the schedule going in Beijing. And the built environment is one thing, another is the quality of the atmosphere. What's it like to perform in a town usually shrouded in smog?

(This program was originally broadcast on 06/04/07)

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

Mick O'Regan: Hello, and welcome to The Sports Factor, here on ABC Radio National Summer.

I'm Mick O'Regan.

This week we're interested in what's going on in Australia to prepare teams for this year's Olympic games, which are being held in Beijing.

The Chinese capital, a city with a population of over 14-million people and whose limits extend for 80 kilometres, is of course in the midst of sustained industrial growth, and is struggling with problems of air and water pollution.

Later in the show we'll hear from two members of the Australian Institute of Sports: Assistant Director Phil Borgeaud and leading sports scientist, David Martin, about how our teams are preparing for the challenge of Beijing.

But first to Fairfax journalist, Jacquelin Magnay, who toured the Chinese capital last year to inspect the Olympic sites and to be briefed on what's happening to make the deadline of August eighth this year.

When we spoke, I began by asking Jacquelin what our athletes will first encounter when their coach pulls out of Beijing airport.

Jacquelin Magnay: Well they may not see too much, because when I arrived in Beijing it was just thick with air pollution, and I was actually choking when I first arrived. It was like sticking your head in the M5 tunnel in Sydney, and being behind a truck. It was just incredibly intense and yes, the visibility was reduced, it was like a very, very heavy smog. And you could actually feel it on your skin. You know how you have that kind of sweaty, kind of dirt -

Mick O'Regan: Sort of gritty feeling?

Jacquelin Magnay: Yes. It wasn't very pleasant, but I must say after being there for a couple of days there was a huge wind and it cleared the air and suddenly I saw blue sky and it was like Wow! this is great. But my initial impressions weren't that good.

Mick O'Regan: Oh, OK, so when the wind comes up there is a chance that that pollution gets scoured to some degree?

Jacquelin Magnay: Yes, there was. And then it takes another couple of days for the pollution to build up to level where it becomes uncomfortable again. So the Games for Beijing of course will be held in their summer and they have of course then the issues of heat and pollution combined.

Mick O'Regan: My understanding is that in August in Beijing is hot and humid.

Jacquelin Magnay: Incredibly hot, incredibly humid and incredibly smoggy. The Beijing Olympic organisers are well aware of this though, and they have taken some extreme measures to try and make the Games as comfortable as possible for the athletes, because, of course, this is their big opportunity to showcase their city and their country to the world, and they want to show that they're the new technology-driven, proactive country of the future.

And they have already moved their steelworks, half of their production of their local steelworks has been moved to another province, and they're planning on moving the rest of it as well. All the local coal factories will be turned off for a couple of weeks before the Games. You're going to have a situation where cars will be banned. So all government cars will be taken off the road. And at the moment they're estimating that there will be 3.5-million cars in Beijing by the time of the Games, but that they can get 2-million of those cars off the road during the time of the Games.

Mick O'Regan: 2-million cars?

Jacquelin Magnay: Yes.

Mick O'Regan: They're all such big numbers in Beijing.

Jacquelin Magnay: I know, and we're talking about a city of about 15-million, 16-million people, so that gives you some idea. They're actually selling at the moment, the statistics show that they're selling 800 to 1,000 new cars a day in Beijing.

Mick O'Regan: Well those statistics are in themselves remarkable but when you think that people are going to run and jump and do all the Olympic things, at the highest level of performance possible, as far as that equation is concerned, how hard will it be to perform to your optimum in those conditions?

Jacquelin Magnay: Well it does make it a bit more difficult if you can't breathe nice, fresh, clean oxygen, and your rate of recovery of course is also impacted if the air is not as good as it could be. But I would say and suggest that during the Games, that the organisers will do everything in their power to make that air as clean as possible, and if that means turning off local power stations, they'll do it.

So I think for the athletes, the issue for them, there are other concerns that are more pressing for them than what will be the air quality, and you've got issues of water, drinking the local water, how safe is that? You've got obviously bird flu, and the local diseases in there that Australians may not be familiar with. And the Australian Olympic Committee is looking at limiting the time the athletes are exposed to China, and having training camps offshore, and then coming into China for the Games at the last possible moment.

Mick O'Regan: Oh, I see, so there's no period of acclimatisation to the conditions in Beijing, it's more of an avoidance policy and get there at the last minute?

Jacquelin Magnay: That seems to be what they're doing. They've had several teams already go into Beijing, because there have been some preliminary events there, and there will be a whole range of test events over the next 12 months where the Beijing organisers are testing the venues, where Australian athletes will take part. But at the moment, the preliminary teams that have gone in, we've had sailors go in, we've had triathletes go in, the feedback from those athletes is that they don't really want to prepare in China, that they'd rather prepare in other countries with similar conditions and then come into China at the last moment.

Mick O'Regan: Is it a question of facilities, too, or is it silly to think anything other than Beijing would have the absolute top-shelf facilities already in place?

Jacquelin Magnay: I think they will have top-shelf facilities in place at the time of the Games, but what athletes are experiencing at the moment is not top-shelf, they're experiencing the local food, they're staying in sub-standard venues where accommodation is perhaps not what they're used to. They're not as pampered as what they may be familiar with. So I think that they're feeling a little bit uncomfortable about being in China at the moment. But I am sure that during the Games time, the Olympic Village will be state-of-the-art. And we will see a super, organised Games. I have no doubt that these Games certainly when we're watching them on TV, will be the most spectacular Games we've ever seen.

Mick O'Regan: Now when you go as a journalist to Beijing to cover Olympic stories, what's your engagement with the Olympic Committee? Is it a guided tour right the way round?

Jacquelin Magnay: It is. We were picked up at the hotel at 8 o'clock in the morning, and we were dropped off at the hotel at 1130 at night. And that went on for five days. So we had a succession of interviews, of tours, of banquets, of meeting all the top brass, and they're very aware of Western concerns and the perception of how China may be appearing in the Western media. So they're very keen to address those concerns, and attacking them fairly front-on, and they're trying to make sure the message gets out that they're willing to listen and to take advice from Western countries, that they want to put on the best Games possible, and if that means taking advice from Australians, then they're prepared to do that.

Mick O'Regan: Well Australians were quite prominent in the role they had in Athens; has that been the case in Beijing?

Jacquelin Magnay: It has been the case in Beijing. In fact we've had Australian architects design the Water Cube, which is that spectacular blue swimming venue, and if you haven't seen pictures of it, it is just the most amazing venue. It's a cube, it's made of translucent plastic which shines a really beautiful shimmery blue colour, and it's like air bubbles on the top of a spa, just the outside of the cube. And they've also got the bubbles inside the venue as well. So when you're inside, you just feel like you're inside a spa bath.

Mick O'Regan: What a delusion.

Jacquelin Magnay: It's an amazing sensation, and it will be one of the showcase venues of the Olympics, along with the Olympic Stadium, which has that amazing birds-nest steel frame around it which again is quite forward-thinking isn't it.

Mick O'Regan: Now, indeed, architecturally especially, but for a journalist going there, I have a sense of previous Games and Australian journalists like Harry Gordon for example, who when they would cover Games would also be covering the country, the city, the culture of both, as they saw it as professional journalists. In Beijing do you think it will be different to that? Do you think it'll be a much more - talking of bubbles - that you'll be in the bubble to a greater extent than, say, previous Games?

Jacquelin Magnay: I think we will. Even though the Chinese have now relaxed their visa requirements and are allowing journalists to travel within various provinces without having to give prior, or getting prior permission. And that involved even submitting questions that you were going to ask athletes and coaches if you were travelling outside of Beijing.

That requirement has now been put aside until after the Olympic Games, so China is very keen to be seen to opening up their borders. But of course, just how that will be put into practice to the 10,000 journalists that just descend on Beijing, will be very interesting indeed. I think that maybe the local organisers may not be prepared for those kinds of questions, and having a lot of journalists outside of their control.

Mick O'Regan: Jacquelin, what about Western journalists who want to really go hard on particular stories, that they don't want to do it under the cover of the Games officials. Say if there were allegations of drug use, is that going to be possible, that free range attack on topics?

Jacquelin Magnay: I think it will be, although it will be interesting to see how that's presented within China and within the local media. I think there will be enormous controls put on the Chinese media, because that is, for the domestic population, I think the messages that they're hearing, and they see and they read will be completely different to the stories that are presented to the rest of the world, because you will have Western journalists pursuing these types of stories, and not just receiving the information as what happens at the moment in Beijing.

It's very tightly controlled the media there. For instance, if you go and Google 'Tiananmen Square' when you're in China you see nothing but this glorious, historic, cultural venue. And nothing of the massacre that happened there. So the messages will be completely different I think to the Chinese as opposed to those outside of China.

Mick O'Regan: Indeed, which means that people inside China who feel that their message is suppressed, for example, the Falun Gong, they will be particularly enthusiastic about accessing Western journalists. What do you see happening there during the Games?

Jacquelin Magnay: Well I think there will be some protests and some demonstrations because this is their one big chance to get their message out, and I know that within China, the Falun Gong is the major security concern for the organisers. It's not outside terrorism, it's security within the country. So it will be interesting to see how that is managed and controlled by the Chinese authorities.

Mick O'Regan: Of course the good stories that they're no doubt hoping for will be in the form of medals. China, I imagine, has been tailoring its Olympic preparations over decades for this every event, for a Games in Beijing. How big is the Chinese team going to be, to your understanding, and how well do you think they'll perform?

Jacquelin Magnay: They'll be the biggest team at the Games, because they can pre-qualify for all of the events. So they don't have to, as the host nation, they don't have to qualify for events, they automatically are participating in each of the events. I know that Australia is going to have about 500 athletes and I anticipate that China would have maybe 700 to 800, similar to the American team.

They are obviously very keen to top the medal tally and knock off the big guns, the Americans, and it's been suggested that they've been foxing a little bit of late and that the very best swimmers and their very best athletes haven't been actually participating on the world stage, and that suddenly there will be this enormous crop of talented youth come through and secure these medals for the athletes. But of course at some point they do have to come forward.

Mick O'Regan: Jacquelin, thank you very much for talking to The Sports Factor.

Jacquelin Magnay: Thanks very much.

Mick O'Regan: Fairfax journalist, Jacquelin Magnay.

Now to the view of science. At the Australian Institute of Sport, physicians, nutritionists, bio-mechanics specialists and plain old coaches, are steadily generating a raft of information on individual and team performances.

The numbers are being crunched to hopefully yield better results in the Games.

Dr Phil Borgeaud is the Assistant Director of the AIS for Sport Programs, and Dr David Martin is a senior sports physiologist and the sports science co-ordinator for the cycling team.

They joined me from the ABC's Canberra studio.

Phil Borgeaud and David Martin, first of all welcome to The Sports Factor program, on ABC Radio National.

Both: Thank you, Mick.

Mick O'Regan: Phil, to start with you, just the broad picture of preparing a team to go to an Olympics; in ballpark figures (to use the Americanism) what does it involve?

Phil Borgeaud: Look, if we're talking about the overall Olympic team and the sort of contribution that particularly the Federal government makes, we're talking in the ballpark vicinity of $90-million to $100-million a year. I guess that it's important to note that at any point in time we're really preparing athletes for the future, and right now it's not that all of the athletes that we have currently in the system and being supported by coaching and science and the administration, are for Beijing.

We have a lot of athletes in the system that have already been identified as London 2012 athletes, and indeed in some sports, some athletes already identified for 2016. It's really a long-term process, and that $90-million to $100-million a year that the Federal government invests through the Australian Sports Commission and the Australian Institute of Sport, underpins that process.

Mick O'Regan: David Martin, to turn to the scientific side of things initially. We've heard earlier in the program from the Fairfax journalist, Jacquelin Magnay, who recounted what it was like for her to go to Beijing. Now she was there in February, it's not the hot, humid part of the year. Give me a broad picture as you prepare your athletes, particularly cyclists, whose stamina and endurance is paramount, what will it mean for those athletes to be performing in those conditions?

David Martin: The first thing that we'll have to identify is a way to create awareness. So it's very important that the athlete that's about to give a world or a personal best performance, knows what they're up against. So cycling, along with a number of Australian sports, is taking the approach to take a reconnaissance trip and Beijing is hosting a number of test events, and what we'll be doing is taking our best athletes that we can get a hold of, and let them experience the conditions of Beijing. Now we've heard that it could be maybe 30, 35 degrees Celsius, but we've been at Olympic venues where it's warm.

We've heard that it's going to be polluted, and we've heard about particulate matter and ozone levels and we've heard about smog and all the consequences of having these big industry factories that are working with coal and steel and cement, pouring pollutants into the air. But we heard the same thing going into Athens as well. What we're really trying to do is take a calm, calculated approach, get our best athletes into Beijing and let them experience competition after Beijing's had a chance to present the best side of the city.

We've already heard from triathletes, and we've heard from the sailing programs that have gone in for test events, that Beijing does have an ability to very quickly clear up the air pollution. Now to what magnitude it's cleared up, and how it interacts with humidity and temperature, is something that we need to experience for ourselves.

Mick O'Regan: Indeed. And earlier in the program Jacquelin Magnay was talking about the measures that the Chinese authorities are going to take. They're going to reduce the number of cars on the road, they're going to relocate polluting factories to adjacent provinces. And I suppose if you think back, there would be people listening to this program who well remember the 1968 Mexico Olympics, where the combination of smog and altitude really changed the conditions there. I suppose you go to compete in the conditions that the host city provides.

David Martin: Yes, that's right. And I think one of the real advantages that Australia has with the Australian Institute of Sport is that you have seasoned veterans who are preparing the athletes and who are advising and consulting with the coaches. I mean I'm by no means the most senior scientist at the Australian Institute of Sport, I've done the '96, 2000, and 2004 Olympic Games, and so I'd be kind of middle-of-the-road. So there are people with more experience than me.

Our director himself, Dr Peter Fricker, he's been to numerous Olympic Games, he's thought about Seoul, thought about Barcelona; a lot of hype will go around the Olympic Games; there'll be these themes that emerge that if athletes don't prepare themselves for the pollution, they will die or they'll have far from peak performances. I think Australia, we're in the business of presenting very talented athletes to adverse conditions, and I think we feel very confident that we can take the right approach.

You don't want to ignore the problems but you don't want to get carried away with the problems. The main focus will always be getting the very best of athletes selected to the team, and making sure that fitness is at the highest level, and that we then transport these athletes into the Games in a way that doesn't disrupt their ability to perform.

Mick O'Regan: And to come back to you, Phil Borgeaud, what David's saying is that putting the athletes in place, is it going to be as Jacqueline suggested earlier, that rather than a long period of acclimatisation on the ground in Beijing, Australian teams and individuals will prepare nearby and then if you like, drop in to Beijing. So it's not about acclimatising it's about the shortest possible time on the ground before performing?

Phil Borgeaud: That's certainly the approach that most teams are going to take. As you can imagine, there's been a lot of discussion about this over the last few years, and pretty much the consensus is that it's best to prepare away from Beijing and get there with really just enough time to get organised and be ready for the event.

Mick O'Regan: Now preparing for the event, there are of course the broad issues of air pollution that we've spoken about. What about specific health concerns, and here (without trying to be extremist or alarmist) bird flu is obviously a problem in central Asia; does the AIS or the AOC perhaps, have to have in place specific contingency plans to deal with particular illnesses or diseases?

David Martin: Yes, I might take that one. It's certainly been a pretty major issue moving into Beijing to be aware of all the possible diseases, or any of the infectious diseases that athletes could pick up. Again, Australians have travelled to all parts of the world, they've competed in Africa, they've competed in South America, and there is I think a certain level of maturity that goes with the advice that's given to the coaches and athletes.

Dr Baquie, who is now essentially the Chief Medical Officer for the Australian Olympic Committee, he has been working with the team, and they've identified a number of different types of infectious diseases, and then prudent measures to take to try to either avoid contact, to decrease risk, or to directly combat a problem. Certainly athletes will have their full immunization programs checked to make sure that they're not going in exposed, but then a lot of the approaches that Phil was talking about, where athletes are going in to Beijing with just enough time to familiarise and then complete well, they're minimising any time where they could pick up any type of an infectious disease.

And Beijing will be doing everything it possibly can, bird flu gets a lot of press. The incidence of bird flu is still incredibly low, the ability to have bottled water and to have hygiene practices that the athletes are taught at the Institute from a very early age, will stay strong with those messages, and I personally believe that the risk will be more than manageable, it'll probably be as small, if not smaller, than some of the other areas Australian athletes compete in.

Mick O'Regan: Right. And the athletes go in a bubble. Is it a question of bottled water and prepared food, or once there, do the athletes simply eat the food and drink that's provided by the organising committee in Beijing?

David Martin: A lot of it's about dealing with the mental wellbeing of the athlete as well as the practicalities of what you're doing. So if you're an athlete and you've heard about the ability to pick up something as simple as travellers diahorroea, by drinking the water source that's not clean, or that you're not prepared to deal with, then it's better for your health to drink bottled water. So Dr Louise Burke is in charge of the nutrition department at the Australian Institute of Sport, again seasoned veteran. She knows how to go in before the teams arrive, and how to make sure that the foods that could be potentially a little dodgy, or the water sources that could be potentially a little bit dodgy, are avoided, and that the athletes can have a lot of confidence on how they're living and what they're putting in their mouth for food and fluid.

Phil Borgeaud: I think the other point probably to make there is that athletes have dealt with these issues throughout their development across a range of countries, and the approach they'll take in Beijing will essentially be no different to that approach that they take, if they were going to Western Europe.

Mick O'Regan: Well look, let's move from food, if you like, to the toys involved in contemporary sport, because I understand that - let me preface this by saying I was lucky enough to hear a couple of speakers at the AIS a year or two ago, where they talked about international co-operation, and David Martin, one of the issues that came up within cycling was that various techniques had been used to familiarise our road cyclists with the conditions on the course in Athens. That the tenor of the discussion was to say that there's a lot of international co-operation but it sort of shuts down as the Games become more imminent. Is that the case? Are we already into 'We've got our knowledge, you get your own' mentality?

David Martin: Yes, there probably is a little bit. I have a lot of colleagues around the world that work in high performance cycling support and cycling science, and our conversations start to become quite dry the year before the Olympic Games. We discuss things like How are the wife and kids? So you're probably right, that the intricacies of what each program or each sport is doing starts to be left out of conversations.

We're in a situation now where the Australian Institute of Sport has become so big that we attract very bright people to come and work with us, and we're now getting our first wave of staff that have come to us as students to learn the trade, kind of as, well they're doctoral students essentially, they've graduated. And now they're fair game for almost any country to hire. And one doctoral student I worked with for three years, he's now working with the UK Sports Science System, and I've always told him, you know, he owes me, I've helped him get his job! So he's working with the other guys, and already our emails are starting to become less and less informative as he tells me what he's exactly involved with.

Mick O'Regan: Let me just push into an area that I'm not all that competent in, but I'll ask you in the hope that you are: are there concerns about intellectual property then? If a doctoral student has worked on a particular program at the AIS and has been funded by Australian authorities, does that knowledge stay with that particular student, of is that knowledge owned by the AIS and that person cannot take it with him or her if they go somewhere else?

David Martin: You can probably get a room of lawyers and spend a couple of weeks on this issue, but from a real practical point of view, it really isn't what you know, it's what you can put in place. So again the AIS really prides itself on its ability to implement. There's hundreds and thousands of very bright scientists around the world, but very, very few of them are in a position where they can work day to day without athletes. Look at the medical profession: the Australian Institute of Sport has three, four fully qualified doctors, and they're paid for a full working week to devote their time and interest into Olympic sport.

That doesn't happen very many places around the world; most of them have private medical clinics, they have other jobs, they work in cancer wards, and they 'hobby' with Olympic sport. So we have the ability to implement knowledge. So though you may think Ah, we're losing out, we're giving our great ideas away to other countries as they go with our students or staff that have worked with us before. I think those that leave, really recognise the difficult part of the equation is to actually implement your knowledge with coaches and athletes that trust you and with an institution of people that support efforts and have a real can-do attitude.

Mick O'Regan: Now before I go back to Phil Borgeaud and ask about what the expectations are for Beijing 2008 David, a final question to you: now I have heard from various people that some of the innovative techniques that you've used with the road cycling team, for example, is actually to use remote controlled toy planes I suppose they are, to which are attached cameras that allow you to monitor the progress of the pelaton, and I suppose individual riders. Just take the listeners through that process of flying a small plane over a group of cyclists.

David Martin: Well that's obviously top secret information, and so if I told you I'd have to kill you. No. We have a number of toys and tricks, and some of them might be considered almost gimmicks, but usually what we're trying to do is take existing technology, or a technology that we can mould or modify very quickly to allow coaches to answer their questions. In the big picture, it's all about asking and answering questions. So one of the questions the cycling coaches have, are how can the athletes better position themselves in the bunch before a sprint finish if you're on one wheel, and in drafting, you might set yourself up well for a win; if you're on another wheel you might not even run top five.

It's very difficult to get the visual images to back up whether the athletes are doing what the coaches have asked them to do. So yes, through some contacts and through some very clever work with some technicians at the Institute, we've been able to construct a plane; it has cameras on board and it telemeters the image down to a screen, so the coach can see live what's happening out on the field while these athletes are practising and simulating different types of attacks and sprint finishes. And then their coach can take, just like they would for soccer or basketball, they can take the athletes, sitting down and then review whether the athlete did what their coach was hoping they would do.

Mick O'Regan: Do you think it'll ever be released on video for general release?

David Martin: Probably not. We talked about taking our plane to China, but we were afraid it might get shot down, so I think you need some kind of clearance for that, those type of activities.

Mick O'Regan: No doubt. Phil Borgeaud, to look a bit now at what the Australian team might reasonably expect to do in Beijing, and I realise of course we're a way out still, but we did so well at Sydney, and the performance at Athens I think surprised a lot of people in the way it emulated that Sydney performance. Beijing, I imagine, is going to be a Games at which particularly China and some of the emerging Asian and subcontinental nations will want to do well. Should we be preparing ourselves to not do as well as the past two Olympics?

Phil Borgeaud: Look, I guess from our point of view, we're always preparing ourselves for that, and you're quite right in what you say. We think that China will be enormously successful, not only in Beijing actually, we think that Beijing and the effort they will have put into Beijing will really set China up for London. So China is, we think really a looming threat and could actually blow away the United States from the top of the medal table.

Mick O'Regan: Phil Borgeaud and David Martin, thank you very much for coming on to The Sports Factor here on ABC Radio National.

Both: Thank you, a pleasure, Mick.

Mick O'Regan: Dr Phil Borgeaud and Dr David Martin from the Australian Institute of Sport.

And that's the program for this week. My thanks to the production team of Producer Andrew Davies, and our Technical Producers, Costa Zouliou and Peter McMurray.

I'm Mick O'Regan - thanks for listening.

I'll look forward to your company again next week on the Sports Factor here on ABC Radio National Summer.

Guests

Jacquelin Magnay
Fairfax sports journalist.

Dr Phil Borgeaud
Assistant Director of the Australian Institute for Sport.

Dr David Martin
Senior Sports Physiologist, Australian Institute for Sport.

Presenter

Mick O'Regan

Producer

Andrew Davies