Knowing China Through Sports

The Strength of Chinese Sports

Currently, Chinese athletes have achieved a prominent role in international events. “In addition to the sports in which they have traditionally cemented hegemony – table tennis, diving, badminton, and gymnastics – they have also been included in the elite of many others.” Remember that almost no one is surprised about China’s successes in women’s volleyball and soccer, swimming, weightlifting, cycling, fencing, athletics, judo, tennis, or boxing. “In the years that I have lived here, I have seen how athletes of those sports, somehow marginalized by the media, have won the celebrity category that was reserved for stars like Li Ning in gymnastics or Fu Mingxia in dives.”

Ramírez pointed out that the 2008 Olympic Games represented China’s definitive leap as a world sports power, which will also end up experimenting in winter sports. “After the Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang will be those of Beijing 2022, which, with almost total certainty, will be a before and after in the history of sports in China, as it was at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.” Given his experience as a sports analyst, Ramírez dares to predict that, “the Chinese delegation will be included in the top five of the medal table and will maintain that category in the future.”

During all these years, Ramírez feels that he has grown professionally thanks to his Chinese and foreign colleagues in CGTN in the Spanish department, and his desire to overcome difficulties. “It has been a process of constant learning, mainly in an attempt to unify the language we use. In an international channel, one must get rid of localisms and be obsessive with pronunciation to meet the demands of a multinational audience.”

He has visited many places in China to enjoy its landscapes and get closer to its millenary culture and history. “One life is not enough to know China; it would be nonsense to list the places that have impressed me because the list is very extensive.” During all these years, he has been aware that to understand the Chinese, one must enter into their past. “Living in China allows you to contrast the impact of the rapid economic development in a society with deep-rooted cultural customs, which is a fascinating contradiction between modernity and tradition,” said Ramírez.

In March 2012, Ramírez found the love of his life in Beijing. “My wife is Russian, a fashion designer, from a city called Magnitogorsk, next to the Ural Mountains, and we got married on February 14, 2014.” His excellent voice and the knowledge achieved over years augur a promising future.