This was in yesterday's Trib. I found it very interesting....
Dan
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0704100784apr11,1,6508710.story
8-year-old marathoner runs and runs ... and runs
April 11, 2007
LINGAO, China -- The clock above her bed read 2:24 a.m. -- time for the
8-year-old to train for another marathon.
Second grader Zhang Huimin, who weighs 42 pounds and likes the Little
Mermaid, sat up and gave a groggy glance around the one-room home she shares
with her father, an out-of-work fish farmer with a singular goal: grooming
his daughter for the 2016 Olympics.
"Don't dawdle," her father said softly, "or you won't be out the door by
2:55."
Next year, Beijing will host the 2008 Olympics, casting an unprecedented
spotlight on China's athletes and the nation that shapes them. Huimin is too
young for the Beijing Games, but she has already appeared in an Olympic
promotion on state television, her first flicker of national fame.
On this Saturday, as she does most weekends, the girl will run more than 26
miles before school -- on top of dozens of miles she runs before school each
week. Those statistics cry out for skepticism, but watching her run for more
than four hours or interviewing marathon officials who recorded her recent
races makes it hard to find any hints of a hoax.
To her adoring village in southern China, her image -- pigtails and arms
swinging, her father cycling beside her -- embodies strength and sacrifice.
But to others just learning of her story, she personifies a darker side of
today's China: a culture of relentless competition amplified by a media
hungry for celebrities.
The story of China's youngest marathoner is most likely not about the
world's next great runner; her tiny body is almost certain to give out if
she keeps running so much, experts in China and the U.S. say.
Rather, her story is most revealing about the conditions that created her: a
father whose dream of sporting glory never materialized, an impoverished
town dazzled by attention, and a nation where the transformative power of
fame can make almost anything seem worthwhile.
'It's good for the country'
"It's good for her," said Li Kequan, head of the running club in the nearby
city of Haikou. "It's also good for the country and it's good for Haikou."
Indeed, this patch of the Chinese countryside has few other icons. Haikou is
the capital of China's smallest and southernmost province, Hainan. On the
edge of the city lies the rice-paddy county of Lingao, population 400,000,
barely a speck by Chinese standards. Water buffalo amble across the highway.
Farmers earn an average of $1 a day.
In China, the prospect of athletic fame holds unique appeal. In a nation of
1.3 billion people that never has enough jobs or university places to go
around, sports is a path to success that does not require influence or
money.
The most recent Forbes listing of Chinese celebrities ranked athletes in the
top two, based on media appearances and income: Shanghai-born Houston
Rockets center Yao Ming, who was a gangly 3rd grader when he was plucked by
the state to play basketball, and Olympic gold medal-winning hurdler Liu
Xiang, who earned an estimated $7.25 million last year in endorsements.
Among the residents of Lingao is Zhang Jianmin, a small, kindly 54-year-old
laborer. He was a standout table-tennis player and runner when he graduated
from high school in 1974, but the chaos of the Cultural Revolution stymied
his hopes of entering China's Soviet-style sports schools.
He found work as a bureaucrat but gave it up to try raising fish. That
failed, and today his income comes from an adult son who sends cash each
month. His wife left years ago, and they have lost contact, he says.
Zhang said he started running with his daughter when she was 4, adding
distance each morning. By age 6, she could run 8 miles; at 7, she completed
the Haikou marathon in 3 hours, 28 minutes and 45 seconds.
A father's high hopes
Most recently, she finished China's Xiamen International Marathon on March
31, with a time of 3 hours, 44 minutes and 51 seconds. Organizers waived the
minimum age of 18 and allowed her father to bike beside her because "she is
a special case," said He Xi, vice director of the race.
Local reporters hail Huimin as the "Haikou Prodigy." When Ding Yunfang,
principal of the local private elementary school, caught wind of her
running, she gave Huimin a scholarship.
"She can run more than 40 kilometers [almost 25 miles] in a day and look
totally fine," the principal said. "Whether it is a scientific way [to
train], we aren't so clear, but her father says it's no problem."
Zhang is blunt: He has staked everything on his daughter's running.
"My plan is that we will have a hard five years," he said, "and then, when
she reaches 12 or 13 years old, she could take part in more national
competitions. Hopefully, a professional team will take her."
As father and daughter headed out into the dark at 2:53, she grabbed a hair
band adorned with a pair of short pink bunny ears. In red shorts and white
T-shirt, she broke into a jog, her white cotton sneakers padding along the
asphalt, with her father riding his banged-up mountain bike.
A crew from Chinese state television crept beside them in a gray sedan,
cameraman poking out of the sunroof. Hours passed. Huimin and her father
paused for a drink every hour or so. By dawn, the state camera crew had long
since drifted off to a hotel, but a cameraman from a local channel had shown
up.
Four hours and 35 minutes after they started, the father decided that was
enough for the day.
"I like long-distance running because it's fun. It's not tiring," Huimin
said a little while later, riding to school with freshly combed pigtails.
"My goal is to be a winner."
What are her favorite things to do?
"Besides running," she said, "I like boxing, weight training, standing high
jump and leg stretching."
Ask any health expert about her training regimen, and the answers are
similar. "The long-term consequence is that she is going to be injured, and
her career is going to be short-lived," said Dr. Kathy Weber, head of
Women's Sports Medicine at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.
Orthopedic problems loom
Overtraining at such a young age can erode the cartilage in joints, delay
menstruation, reduce bone density and cause a range of orthopedic problems,
including stunted growth. At 42 pounds, Huimin is underweight, her father
concedes, but she has never had a full check-up, so he does not know what
toll her training has taken.
"I think this will be very detrimental to her physical and mental
well-being," said Mark Plaatjes, a 1993 World Champion marathoner who like
most of his peers did not run that 26.2-mile distance until his late teens.
There are precedents, of course, with few happy endings. A marathoning
4-year-old boy in India, Budhia Singh, became a sensation last year, until
he collapsed from low blood sugar and authorities barred his coach from
entering him in more competitions.
Until recently, Huimin and her outsize training had gone largely unnoticed.
She is too young for China's sports academies, so coaches say they won't
look seriously at her until she is 13, which explains why her father's
homegrown training has gone unchecked.
Indeed, now that Huimin's story has begun to appear in Olympic promotions,
even some of the country's athletic kingmakers are unnerved.
"I just heard about it recently," said Feng Shuyong, head coach of China's
national track and field team. "But nobody in this field agrees with that
kind of training. We think it's unimaginable."
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