Better to Race and Lose or Not to Race?

From Brad.

The answer to that question might be different depending on where you are from. This is a big difference between the Eastern and Western mindset. To be more specific: Liu Xiang, the Chinese 110m hurdles gold medalist in the 2004 Athens Olympics withdrew from the Beijing Olympics due to 'unbearable' pain. My question is, 'Was he really hurt?' This might seem like a strange question (or even impolite), but consider this.

When Chinese athletes (or students, workers, etc.) fail, they are inundated with an obscene amount of shame. For example when Wang Hao lost the ping pong gold medal match to a non-Chinese in 2004 his coach scolded him, “You made a lot of Chinese have their dreams broken.” An apoplectic Chinese media ripped him to shreds, demanding answers for his wilting under the stress. “I was under enormous pressure,” he mumbled then, an answer not nearly satisfactory for Chinese fans.

Again, when 7 year olds come home from school with average or low grades, their parents say similar things. When 13 year old gymnasts (oops, I mean 16 years old) fall down, they get to hear such motivational speeches for 4 years to 'help them succeed next time'. The thought is if you heap enough shame on the individual, then their motivation will be that much greater to succeed. Of course this is why suicide tends to be much higher in Asian countries.

Back to national hero Liu Xiang. Was he really hurt? Well, he was hurt last year, but had recovered and run many races recently. His times were good, but not nearly fast enough to compete with the world's elite. It was almost certain that if he ran, he would not win the race. Factor all this into the following stat (found on Yahoo), "Liu's dramatic withdrawal from the Olympics has cast a big shadow over a golden Games for hosts China. In a survey of more than a million Chinese carried out at the end of last year, the top Olympic dream was to witness Liu winning gold at the "Bird's Nest" stadium."

The Western mindset typically cares about the individual and maybe a small number of important people who are his/her biggest supporters. When he doesn't win, he feels the weight of letting himself down (and maybe them). The Eastern mindset knows he represents his family or in more high profile cases, his country. I can't say Liu Xiang was perfectly healthy and able to run, but given the above information, it wouldn't surprise me at all if he chose not to race in order to avoid 'letting down' 1.4 billion people.