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Paying for Sporting Success

As the Olympics juggernaut starts to roll, we find out what it really costs to get an athlete onto the winning podium. Plus Chinese basketball and it reveals about the country's commercial culture.

As the Olympics juggernaut starts to roll, Professor David Forrest of Salford University provides the bottom line on what it really costs a nation to get its athletes onto the winning podium. And as China aspires to Olympic glory in basketball, we hear from Bob Weiss, one of the NBA coaches hired to raise the standard of the sport in China. There are more than 300 million basketball fans in China, it's calimed, but as writer, Jim Yardley, explains, the problems the sport has faced are a revealing emblem of the wider challenges facing China as it expands economically.

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18 minutes

Last on

Thu 26 Jul 2012 11:32GMT

Broadcasts

  • Thu 26 Jul 2012 07:32GMT
  • Thu 26 Jul 2012 11:32GMT

Podcast