Without a gold in their pocket, some provincial sports bureau chiefs face humiliation among their peers despite the grand victory of the Chinese team at the Olympics, says an article in Beijing News. The following is an excerpt:

After the closing of the Olympic Games, a sports bureau chief in Henan province said on Wednesday that he should be responsible for the failure of athletes from his province not winning a gold medal. In contrast, his counterpart in Jiangsu province said on the same day that the provincial government would hold a ceremony to award their Olympic champions.

The number of Olympic gold medals has determined the fate and mood of these officials - provincial sports bureau chiefs.

Why are some chiefs to blame when Chinese athletes won the most gold medals at the Olympics? Obviously, that is due to the traditional mindset that the performances of sports officials is only gauged by the number of gold medals won by their athletes.

The performance of a province's athletes at the Olympics will now be judged with their performance at the National Games, which showcases the sporting abilities of each province. As the Beijing Olympics was held on home soil and 23 other provinces all reaped gold medals, the sports bureau chief of Henan was naturally put under heavy pressure..

Many people may question the practice of taking gold medals as a yardstick to measure the sports performance of different provinces.

We urgently need a better evaluation system. Gold medals should not be used to judge whether a province has done a good job in developing sports. We should look more at the conditions of mass sports and the general health of the athletes. The development of the sports industry as a whole should be looked at too.