By Jeffrey Du

The Gaokao (高考), China’s college entrance exam, is one of the most notorious tests in the world, known for its rigor and importance for Chinese public school students’ futures. A good Gaokao score opens doors to top schools, while a poor Gaokao score gives students few choices beyond entering vocational school.

For student athletes, however, this journey is very different: while some take the Gaokao anyway, they must also participate in the Tikao (体考), a test where four years of blood, sweat, and tears depend on a single race, a single jump, or a single throw.

Despite this undoubtedly brutal process for track and field in China, we don’t often see Chinese athletes lining up for the Olympic 100-meter final. Perhaps genetics can explain some of this. Yet Su Bingtian, the first Chinese athlete to officially run a 100-meter dash in under 10 seconds, would not be considered “genetically gifted” for sprinting. Genetics might be the easiest answer to excuse China’s lack of success, but I believe there is more to it.

As a student-athlete attending an international school in China, I have had the privilege of engaging in physical training like a Chinese athlete without the mental burden of preparing for the Tikao. I would watch the public school students as I trained with them, half outsider and half teammate. While I trained with them, I didn’t run for my future like they did; to me, running was a passion. My cultural distance from them allowed me to observe what running meant to them, and—intriguingly—helped me better understand running, too.

 After our final practice before the Tikao, we finished a brutal session and laid down on the track. As our coach walked over, a senior got up and packed his bags, saying, “Goodbye, coach.” Without missing a beat, our coach replied, “Hope to never see you again.” I laughed at first, before realizing what he meant: he hoped his student would score high enough on the Tikao that he would make it to the next level, never have to train like this again. In that moment, the difference between myself and these student athletes became clear; to them, track wasn’t a sport—it was a path that they could not stray away from. And they could only escape by running as fast as they could to the finish line.

The mental tension of balancing their athletic training with schoolwork is itself a test of endurance. Overtrain, and they risk injury, poor grades, and losing their only shot at a top school or good future; undertrain, and regret will follow them for the rest of their lives. No amount of preparation can guarantee a night of good rest before the test, or good weather. And after the results are out, all that’s left is to reminisce, either with or without regrets, about the four years that led up to that moment.

I saw the effect of this pressure firsthand on one of my training partners, a boy my age who seemed happier on the track than anyone else I’d ever met. He was the first person to introduce himself to me when I first started training with the cohort. He trained hard, but he laughed harder, and for the longest time, I thought he would run forever.

One day, the boy stopped coming to practice. At first, I thought he was just sick or needed a break. But as the weeks passed, I realized that something was wrong. When I asked the other students why, they told me that he had decided to focus on studying—he felt that he wouldn’t be able to run a good enough Tikao time for a top school, and wanted to use these last few years to work on improving his Gaokao score instead. I remember standing on the track and staring into space after hearing this, feeling a mix of sadness, confusion, and even anger at how unfair the system is to these student athletes. He was faster than I was, and we shared the same passion for running, and yet he decided to quit running. In another world, he might’ve been a local running prodigy, running alongside his teammates free of the pressures from the Tikao. But in this hyper-standardized system, he was just another student-athlete who was forced to sacrifice his passion in hopes of a better future.

In China, the term “student athlete” (体育生) carries a negative connotation; they are associated with “taking the easy route” because they don’t have to achieve as high a Gaokao score, stereotyped as lazy, disrespectful, or even rebellious. The stereotypes have created extreme discrimination against student athletes, who—because of this discrimination—fail to achieve as much as other students, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that affects not only their performance but also the nation’s perception of track and field itself. Another major uncertainty for athletes in China remains whether they can sustain their livelihoods through sports their entire lives. For the average student-athlete, the time invested in training has an opportunity cost: time lost for studying. For this reason, if these student athletes are unable to perform at a high level, not only do they lack a high level of education, but their job opportunities are confined to either a Physical Education teacher or a club sports coach.

Conversely, track and field is still young in China, having gained real traction only in recent years. For this reason, athletes in China haven’t received proper guidance and training until recently. Even so, there has been substantial progress, especially with the availability of online resources and seminars by experienced foreign coaches in China. China has seen incremental improvements in its track times, as Asian 100m record holder Su Bingtian said his time of 9.83s is “100 percent not my limit, which is very important” (qtd. in Reuters). China’s track will continue to improve in the near future, and the limits of Chinese athletes are not where people expect them to be. Perhaps the next evolution of Chinese track won’t depend solely on faster legs but also on freer minds. Only then will the race no longer be against fate but toward possibility.