Gold-winning weightlifter Cao Lei was kept in such seclusion training for the Olympics that she was not told her mother was dying. She found out only after she had missed the funeral.

Chen Ruolin, a 15-year-old diver, was ordered to skip dinner for one year to keep her body sharp as a razor slicing into the water. The girl weighs 30kg.

'To achieve Olympic glory for the motherland is the sacred mission assigned by the Communist Party central,' is how Chinese sports minister Liu Peng put it at the beginning of the Games.

The contrast could not be greater than between the Chinese and the US athletes.

In their post-match interviews, the American rambled on about their parents, their siblings, their pets, their hobbies. They repeatedly used the word 'fun.'

Shawn Johnson, the 16-year-old gymnast, waxed enthusiastically about the classes she will take when she returns to her public high school in Iowa.

The Chinese athletes generally do not have pets, hobbies, brothers or sisters - most are products of China's one-child policy.

While US team members frequently hauled their parents to Beijing, most Chinese parents watched the Games on television. Chinese athletes train as many as 10 hours a day, and even the children have only a few hours a day for academic instruction.

The Chinese sports system was inspired by the Soviet Union. While many US athletes have ambitious parents to nurture their talents, China's future champions are drafted as young children for state-run boarding schools.

After Beijing was chosen in 2001 to host the Games, China's sports authorities launched Project 119 - after the number of medals available in athletics, canoeing, sailing, rowing and swimming that were not Chinese strengths.

They assigned promising young athletes to focus exclusively on these sports, some of which they have never heard of.

The final tally gave China 51 gold medals to the United States' 36.

But the costs are high.

'It's too dangerous,' diving coach Zhou Jihong said to a Chinese newspaper, speaking of the extreme diet that kept his 15-year-old athlete at 30kg.

'She has superhuman willpower.'

The 27-year-old Guo Jingjing, a gold medallist in diving weighs 49kg has such bad eyesight that she can barely see the diving board.

It is common for Chinese divers to be recruited as young as six before they have developed a fear of heights.

'Divers who start at an early age before the eye is fully developed have great chance for injuries,' said Li Fenglian, doctor for the Chinese national diving team. She published a study last year reporting that 26 out of 184 divers on the team had retina damage.

Despite the validation provided by the Olympic medal count, China probably is heading in the direction of a more open sports system where the athletes have more freedom.

Having tasted celebrity and the wealth it can bring, many athletes have balked at remaining within a system where they are treated like rank-and-file soldiers.

NEW YORK TIMES