Their reign isn’t over yet. As the Chinese went into the men’s team gymnastics final having placed an astonishingly poor sixth in the qualifications, naysayers began to whisper: did a squad that was the reigning Olympic champion and world-title holder for five consecutive years finally lose its luster?
Not so fast. On July 30, with rowdy Chinese fans yelling “add oil,” a term of encouragement in Mandarin that has a meaning similar to “step on it,” the Chinese squad tumbled and flipped to a resounding victory, more than four points ahead of silver medalist Japan. “All those people who said maybe we weren’t going to win, all they were using were words,” says Zou Kai, the fresh-faced, 24-year-old anchor of the Chinese squad whose horizontal-bar routine all but cemented China’s lead. “What we used were actions. And our actions were to win, so I think people should stop saying things about us.”