Athletes train around the world, some just pick their flag

By Christopher Clarey, Published The Straits Times, 9 Aug 2012

NATIONALITY still matters deeply at the Olympics, as scoreboard operators were reminded before the games even officially began when North Korean soccer players angrily delayed the start of a match because the South Korean flag had been mistakenly displayed next to their names.

But while Olympians continue to represent one flag, their lives are increasingly multinational, which can make it complicated to sort through which nations have played which role in which medal.

Consider, to take just one night and one sport, what happened at the swimming event last week. The two men who tied for the silver medal in the 200m freestyle behind Yannick Agnel of France were Sun Yang of China and Park Tae Hwan of South Korea. Both Sun and Park train regularly in Australia and work with Australian coaches: Sun in Gold Coast with Denis Cotterell and Park in nearby Brisbane with Michael Bohl.

Then came Missy Franklin, the 17-year-old gold medallist in the 100m backstroke from the United States whose parents - both born and raised in Canada - had once offered their tall and talented daughter the possibility of representing Canada.

And then came Ruta Meilutyte, the biggest surprise in the pool so far.

Meilutyte, just 15 years old, represents Lithuania but is now boarding and training at an English private school in Plymouth. The school's students include Tom Daley, the star British diver, as well as student-athletes from more than 20 countries.

It is not uncommon for swimmers in the London Games to have much deeper connections with swimmers from other nations than with their teammates. Park, for example, trains daily with the Australian individual medley star Stephanie Rice.

So it goes in many Olympic sports, including track and field, where the world's best continue to gravitate to training bases and coaches in the United States and Europe.

For years, particularly in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union, the coaching talent flowed overseas in search of opportunity. That still occurs on a large scale, but there is now a stronger flow of athletes to quality coaching, wherever it may be located.

At this post-modern stage, nationality can even be a symbolic choice for a star athlete. Maria Sharapova, who has lived and trained in the United States since she moved to Florida as a young girl to become a tennis champion, continues to represent Russia, the nation of her birth, because she wants to honour her parents, her roots and her Russian identity.

The British have had repeated internal debates about the so-called "Plastic Brits", recently nationalised or recently eligible athletes who are competing for Team GB in London.

The issue came to a head in March at the world indoor track and field championships, when Charles van Commenee, the Dutch head of the British team, named hurdler Tiffany Porter as team captain. Porter, who was born and raised in the United States and has been representing Britain since 2010, was then asked at a news conference if she could sing God Save The Queen. She declined and received support from her teammates.

But even when nationality in sport is clear and unmistakable, influences and emotions can become mixed in this era.

Sun is rapidly becoming a Chinese icon, the latest emblem of the country's ability to thrive on the global stage. Yet he and many other Chinese swimmers have often trained in groups in Australia since the 2008 Games in Beijing.

Sun had no Chinese teammates with him in the 200m freestyle final, but he did have a Miami Swimming Club teammate in Thomas Fraser-Holmes, the Australian who was also coached by Cotterell.

On a visit to the club in Queensland this year, it was clear that the Chinese and Australians as well as the Swiss, Serbians and British who trained under Cotterell all mixed easily.

Though the image of Chinese swimmers in the West is often that of robotic athletes living in austere isolation, that stereotype did not appear to apply in Gold Coast as Sun trained among the internationals and then headed off between practice sessions with his visiting mother for a snack and a discussion.

"I'm inspired by trying to compete with the best at the highest level," Cotterell, 62, explained of working with a global elite.

The arrival of the Chinese in 2007 has helped Cotterell augment his modest income of about A$50,000 (S$65,400) considerably, with retirement looming. But he insists that it has been about more than money. It has been about remaining relevant; about proving that his methods can still help develop champions even if some Australians resent the brain drain, and even if he said he was once threatened with losing his federal funding by national swimming administrators.

That is partly because of what happened in 2008, when the Australian coach Ken Wood supplied training programmes to Liu Zige of China, who ended up beating Wood's Australian charge Jessicah Schipper to win the women's 200m butterfly in Beijing. Wood and Schipper split soon after the 2008 Games.

But in February, after watching Sun put himself through an epic, brutal distance workout, Cotterell stood on the pool deck in Gold Coast and answered his critics.

"If they're prepared to do what I put them through, like this set tonight," he said of Sun and the Chinese. "If they're prepared to do that, they deserve results. And for me, it's reaffirming that this works. And these athletes have worked for me."

NEW YORK TIMES