Inside the Beijing Olympics

By Jeff Ruffolo

As the only American in the senior management team of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games, Jeff Ruffolo takes you behind the scenes and into a world no one has ever before witnessed. This remarkable, first-person account of the Beijing Summer Olympic Games is a riveting narrative taking you inside the greatest Olympics ever!

This true story recounts the author's effort to perfect the broadcasting of NCAA Volleyball on the fledgling Internet and commercial radio stations throughout the Western USA and how he parlayed that experience into becoming America's voice of Olympic Volleyball at the 1996 Atlanta, 2000 Sydney and 2004 Athens Summer Olympics and then finally securing a position with the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee.

Follow the author as he maneuvers alone through unchartered and perilous waters in The People's Republic of China to become the Senior Expert of the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee and the personal challenges he faced as the 2008 Beijing Olympic Media Center managed one global media crisis after another.

Be captivated by this fascinating tale of political intrigue, mystery and magic as you too will be transported ... Inside the Beijing Olympics.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781456609429

Book preview

2012

Chapter 1

The House on Nomar Street

The People’s Republic of China hosted the greatest Olympic Games on Earth.

Do I have your attention?

I would like to think that I did.   Perhaps I should repeat it again for all of you just settling in for what I know will be a good read.

The People’s Republic of China hosted the greatest Olympic Games on Earth.

Now are you paying attention?   I sure hope so because unless you have just stumbled into your favorite bookstore (in print or on-line) and opened this book thinking it is perhaps a story about geography as in saying China’s greatness is being pronounced because of its massive land mass and capability of mass producing Starbucks Coffee houses, you have perhaps advanced to learn about 1/16th of this story.

No Dear Reader, as a proud American I have no doubt that even voicing such an opening to this true story would cause many in Fargo, North Dakota or Lynchburg, Virginia to start sharpening their knifes and voodoo dolls ready to stick my likeness repeatedly for what I will relate to you in this book.   But it bears repeating.   Not only did China host the greatest Olympic Games on Earth.

The People’s Republic of China is the greatest nation on Earth.

***

Well I am sure that now I have you attention.

Okay, so I may be fibbing just a tad to say that China, today, is the greatest nation on Earth, but it certainly it has the potential to do so and during the 2008 Olympics, the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee (BOCOG) created the platform for greatest level of global sport competition and by doing show, showed the world just what the Chinese people can accomplish.   So, how do you judge the greatest found within a nation of people?   Is it within in hectares of land set aside for a hotel or public works program? Or could it be in the arts; the language; the culture or perhaps the food?   I can testify that what I have experienced since when I arrived in China - specifically Baiyun International Airport in Guangzhou in the fall of 1999 and culminating with the 2008 Beijing Olympics and subsequent 2010 Asian Games, that China is all that and so much more.   

As the sole American given the title and position of Senior Expert for the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, I personally saw the greatness of the Chinese people which was clearly evident during the most majestic Olympic Games ever.   How can anyone doubt the Games of the XIXV Olympiad was not the greatest of all Olympics when you have Athletics contested in the Bird’s Nest (National Stadium) and Aquatics in The Water Cube … coupled with the smiles and everyday kindness shown by thousands and thousands of youthful Chinese volunteers. From a sheer architectural perspective alone, both The Water Cube and The Bird’s Nest vividly represent the coming out of China onto the world stage and showcased a Chinese society that has endured for 2,000 years and will do so in like fashion far into the future.

If you want to take a glimpse into the future you don’t have to visit a Disneyland Park and trek over to Tomorrowland.   Instead, just hop on a plane and visit Shanghai.   At Pudong International Airport you can see the Batplane parked next to Millennium Falcon before you board a mag-lev train and travel 400 kilometers an hour into the heart of the city.   If you are lucky, you’ll also catch a glimpse of Spider-Man as he web slings from high-rise to high-rise.   

That is Shanghai.   

China is simply a breathtaking place unlike anything in the world and its current rise as the leading political, economic and culture power in Asia simply cannot be denied.   This nation and its people will never go away and clearly demonstrated so from the moment billions of people around the globe witnessed the Olympic Games that started at 8:08 p.m. on August 8, 2008.   

The Olympic Games in China became the catalyst for a mighty change in a nation of more than 1.3 billion souls and a society that itself is changing and maturing every single day.   Take for example the Olympic Education program, in which the values of sportsmanship, fair play and honesty were taught – without prior editorial censorship – to more than 500 million Chinese youth across the country.   I know this because I was directly involved in the marketing of these programs.   Without the Olympics in China, the worldwide international community would never have any direct influence to the youth of China.   It would simply never happen. Does that mean that we should overlook the things in China that just aren’t so good?   Of course not.   But constantly hammering the Chinese people, to their collective face, about all of the things they are doing wrong will gain you nothing.   In total, the people here will fold their arms and then stare at you.

Better to use a carrot than a mallet.

***

If you saw the Opening Ceremonies of Beijing's Olympic Games, you are among the more than three billion people around the world who watched the Olympics in China either through the technological miracle of television or through the somewhat lesser miracle of being there in person in the Bird’s Nest. It was an awesome Opening Ceremonies, one that American TV host Bob Costas told the millions watching the Games begin that the Chinese have re-written the book on how to do an Olympics.   

A few months later as winter firmed its grip over America and millions of families huddled together by a warm fireplace to celebrate the holidays, NBC TV replayed the Opening Ceremonies of these Beijing Summer Olympics as a TV special.

By any measure, the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games was the greatest Olympic Games ever.

I can say that because I was in the thick of it all.

As the Senior Expert of the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, I certainly wasn't part of any pro-Communist or anti-West political propaganda agenda; my work was in promoting the Olympic Games in China and innovative efforts used to make sure every major and minor print and electronic media outlet knew everything about the Olympic Games in China. One of the things you have to understand about Mainland China from the get-go is that China plays to win. And they always win. They are strategically calculating about what they want and how to get it.  They have their weaknesses to be sure, but the first thing you need to know is that the Chinese Communist government is out to win. But win what?

In America, we think of winning in temporary terms, like personally winning a board game, or vicariously winning a baseball game that pits our favorite professional team against somebody else’s favorite pro team. Winning an election or a lottery, of course, is sometimes life-changing, but for most Americans, winning on any level just provides a brief epinephrine surge of intense pleasure that is just a fond memory within moments after our losing Monopoly opponent runs crying for Mom; finishing off the last of the homemade cherry pie during Thanksgiving or after the guy we elected shows us he is no better than the guy we unelected. In America, win or lose, most of us winners all just go back to doing our normal tasks and wait with hopes for the next game, next slice of pie, the next election, or for death.

Today’s modern Chinese culture - for sure, the Chinese Government - thinks of winning in a much different way. Like forever and everything. China’s small, super-elite group of leaders that absolutely controls this enormous nation’s major and minor decisions, clearly does not think like most of America’s briefly important elected or appointed officials in intentionally confusing Washington, D.C., or just about anyone buying or selling or just strolling along on Main Street USA.   In the People’s Republic of China, the 2008 Olympics meant so much more than the long-established Western sports concept of going out there and doing your best, win or lose. It's not winning. It's how you play the game. Not so in China. With the Olympics held on sacred Chinese soil for the first time ever, winning meant winning more medals than any other team.  It meant generating more corporate sponsorships - inflowing support money - than any other Olympic Organizing Committee in Olympics history. To the Chinese Olympic Committee - indeed - to every loyal Chinese citizen, from industrial magnate to rice-growing peasant with access to a television set, it meant showing the world that modern Communism not only works and delivers the goods to its people, but that its centrally planned economy, based on the original USSR plan, far surpasses the irrational, chaotic Capitalist concepts of multi-party democracy and all that theoretical nonsense about individual freedom of choice.

The same can be said with the unrelenting governmental commitment to bring its society to international standards as more than one-half of all the cranes needed to construct high-rise buildings are here in China. Very soon, a new skyscraper building will be opened in China every single day.   More than 20 new cities are planned for 10 million people to live in where today nothing exists.   What can you say about something like that?   America has more than 1,000 airports.   There are around 150 airports in China, and there is still a long way for the Chinese to catch up but when they want to build something it is built with the finest materials and on a massive scale. For the Beijing Summer Olympic Games, the largest free-standing airport terminal in the world can be found in the new Beijing International Capital Airport with a high-speed subway train connecting the airport with downtown. There is so much money being spent here in China and an unblinking commitment for a space-age, gee-whiz Buck Rogers future that it is changing the landscape of China forever.   To describe a nation that is economically growing at nine percent a year can only be explained in one word.   Frantic.   Everyone is running from meeting to meeting; from morning to night everyone is running, moving and jumping from one project to another.   The roads are clogged with trucks moving good from here to here. There is nothing impossible for the Chinese people to accomplish and the 2008 Olympics was just the start.

In the 1970’s, Chinese citizens needed a document with an official stamp of approval from a Provincial office to travel from one city to another.   Today the freedom of travel is everywhere.   Each of the three major national airlines now has frequent flyer programs with millions of members.   

***

Why do I think China has the latent possibilities to be the greatest nation on Earth?   

Because I see so much positive potential within the people of this country.   Having first travelled here in 1999 and then moving here full time in the Spring of 2007 to work for BOCOG, I have focused my life (and this book) on the positive rather than the negative.   To have this once in a lifetime position at BOCOG, I left everything behind in America to come to China and work for these Olympic Games.   I left my (then) wife and darling 12 year-old daughter Danielle back in Southern California; put my classic 1965 Volvo up on blocks, gave my golden retriever puppy away to my brother Joe in Montana and came to China with two suitcases of clothes.   

Why in the world would I do that?   

Would you, Dear Reader, leave everything behind … your family, friends and life in your home country to come to a nation whose language you can’t read or come close to comprehend?

I did this, simply because I knew, down deep in my soul what the Olympic Games in China meant to the people of this nation and I wanted to be part of it.   

I wanted to make a difference ... and with my publicity and communications skills, I did.

Are there problems here in China?   Of course there are.   It was mentioned more than once from the dais of the daily press conferences of the 2008 Beijing Olympics that China is not a first-world nation like Great Britain or the United States.   China is a developing nation and one that is still growing and trying to find its place within the family of nations. Is China – politically - a democratic nation? No.   But is the world not a better place with a China in which all its people are free to travel, free to learn, free to marry who they want and explore their dreams as they will?   Of course … and that is China today.   Does change happen instantly … in a flash of time? Well, yes.   You only have to be even a high school student from anywhere in the world to see living history all around you. In Beijing is a magnificent structure called the Drum and Bell Tower that in ancient days, every day, rang its bells to call the people of the capital city to awaken and start their day … and at night the drums would softly pound to lull the capital city’s residents to seep.   You can find this structure standing in Beijing exactly as it did more than 1,000 years ago.   Buildings like this, the Temple of Heaven and the Forbidden City are haunted places, filled with the embrace of lovers from generations past; of young children running through its halls.   The spirits of those long since passed today call out from the centuries to an emerging nation of young and inspired artists, poets and dreamers of the present to faithfully represent them in our day today. The culture and heritage of China is so rich and vibrant - filled with a thousand, thousand stories of medieval battles, of long lost loves and cherished family moments.   During my lifetime, China was a forbidden nation, completely closed to the world.   Now each of the nation’s three major airlines have frequent flyer programs with millions of members, clearly as large as United, America or Air France.

And please, do not get me started on the food.   I am a big man - standing more than 6’0" tall (185 cm) and I love to eat.   In all the years in China, I have never had a bad meal.   I have eaten in restaurants from Harbin to Hainan and all are great … except that I won’t eat anything that is still moving. The Chinese people are joyful in defining themselves on the food they eat which likewise then expresses where someone comes from.   The food in Shanghai is sweet and melts in your mouth.   I took a trip there once and at the uppermost floors of a natural wood-paned restaurant that has been in the same place for centuries, I had a wonderful dinner, culminated with a bubbling-hot beef brisket that had been marinating in a sweet honey sauce for hours.   When I close my eyes, I can still taste every succulent morsel as it melted around my tongue.

***

Skeptics abound throughout this beautiful blue planet that we all reside.   As humans we unfortunately tend to look at the negative rather than the positive.   As a trained and professional journalist, I am also so experienced in seeking out truth.   But what is truth?   Whose truth?   When I worked for the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee I stood proudly side by side with the most dedicated people who were committed to the values of Peace through Sport.

Let me repeat … Peace through Sport.

Is there anything more noble and pure than that?   Can we not quietly agree that the Games of the XXIX Olympiad were the greatest of all Olympics?   Yes, it was, and I am honored that that Chinese nation allowed me, an American citizen, to have an extensive role deep inside the Media and Communications machinery of these Games and through the course of this book, you will read it all. Just as it happened and if you were standing beside me every day.

While preparing to write this book, I’ve pondered in reflection often times in the years since the Beijing Summer Olympics to ask ...   why me?   I am merely human and like you Dear Reader, have far too many foibles.   I am nothing special, although I have talents granted to me from God in this life. So, why did the Chinese Government hire me?   The Chinese Olympic Organizers could have hired anyone in the world.   If you were to advertise for the senior position I held in China in preparation for and during the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games in the New York Times, the phones at BOCOG would have been ringing off the hook.

How about this example:

WANTED - Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for an internationally-focused sports marketing publicist with the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad.   Your role will be help guide the worldwide publicity of the Olympics in China.   Must be highly motivated and able to travel.   You will receive the second highest salary of any staff or management of the Olympics, free apartment, free car and eventually you will become the international spokesman of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics to the world.   Only serious inquiries.   Please send your current CV and salary requirements to [e-mail]

My goodness, if this ad did appear, you would have 1,000 applicants in the first day; probably twice that in day two; and that from New York City alone.   If the word did get out that such a position might even remotely or even slightly be possible, BOCOG would have been swamped with resumes from Tulsa to Timbuktu. So instead of putting this ad in USAToday, the Financial Times of London or The Provo Daily Herald, the Chinese selected me.

I think it has to do with trust.   The Golden Rule and all that.   I have never given the Chinese Government or the Chinese people a reason to fear me as a stranger in their nation… but I’ve had to fight and claw for everything I’ve gotten in China, so at the end of the day, yes, I am very grateful to the Chinese people to have earned their trust that brought me to the highest levels any American can rise to. I’ve earned it. Trusting an American in China almost never ever happens here and took me more than nine years. Nine very long years. Much like Joseph toiling away in the service of the Egyptian Pharaoh, it takes a foreigner in China years of dedicated service with an open mind and willing heart to think of life in a different way.   To see a thing, analyze it and offer constructive thoughts to make it better.   This is the Chinese way.   Not to strike down.   Not to be critical but to find a way to make it better.   Because of the senior management positions I have held in the PRC since the late ‘90s, I have been able to travel throughout China and around the world with my daughter. Because of the trust the Chinese people have in me through countless tasks, I have been able to feed my family, watch my daughter grow and start her small steps from childhood into adult.   I am very grateful and my heart is full with gratitude for what I have been allowed to do and herein thank the Chinese people for their generosity to both myself and my daughter.

***

I am a half-glass full type of guy, and as you can tell, look at life on the sunny side.   I’ve had the rare opportunity of traveling around most of our world (although I have yet to visit Peru), I have seen and witnessed enough to make up my own mind as to what I believe is righteous and truthful.   Yes, and like you Dear Reader, I’ve seen my share of dirt.   The world we inhabit is filed with enough of both.   But I look at life through glasses colored … rose. I have always sought out the beautiful things.   I have been allowed and entrusted by the Chinese people to do great things, many of which I will share with you in the pages within.

And yes, like every great movie there has to be a sequel and you will find it soon.   The sequel will highlight the abject failures of Major League Baseball to export itself to the People’s Republic of China.   It is entitled:   Major League Baseball Strikes Out!   Originally part of this manuscript, I elected to remove it, extrapolate it and will present it to you, Dear Reader, very soon.

We all have had that one special day in our lives.   I’ve been fortunate to have many. For the Chinese nation it was Li Ning running around the top of The Bird’s Nest to light the Olympic Cauldron and start the Olympic Games in China.   For me, of course, the day that my daughter Danielle was born was the best.   I was in the delivery room moments after she took her first breath and I fell to my knees thanking God for this great and wondrous blessing that came in to my life.   

I wish you all could meet her one day.

I have also pondered while thinking on how I would tell you of my story here in China, on the so many people who have entered my life, many who have left and some who have stayed on to accompany me along this journey. Do I start the story at the Beijing Olympics and move backward.   I think that would be a bit anticlimactic, don’t you?   

So … let’s start our journey together this way.

As I write to you today, I live in Guangzhou in Southern China.   You may have heard of Guangzhou and its previous name of Canton, being the start of the Silk Road; but Guangzhou was and continues to be my personal entry point into China and the start of my journey of what has been more than 12 years now here in the marvelously mysterious and mystical land of China.   

***

Try this allegory: Imagine you’re a Mormon pioneer crossing the American wilderness in the mid 1800’s heading for the safe and secure land the Native Americans you have met call Utah.   The wagon train you have been leading has been obliterated in a sudden October winter blizzard.   You are tired. Hungry. Alone. You carry your now-dead horse on your back as you cross over into the great Salt Lake Valley.   You reach what you think will be a safe encampment; suddenly finding yourself buck naked, building a log cabin with your bare hands; surrounded by wolves.   

That does not come close to what my Olympic experience in China has been like.

And to tell you how amazing my experiences have been here in China, I suppose that I should begin this story at the beginning.   

No, not Mom screaming for me to finally arrive in the hospital maternity ward and in the case of brevity for reporters at the Associated Press, Reuters and Agency France Press gnawing on their pencils as they read this, please let me condense my professional acumen.

***

I am the youngest of four children, born to Louis and Toni Ruffolo and having grown up in the San Fernando Valley in a beautiful home on Nomar Street in Woodland Hills, I started my sportswriter and sports marketing career at Brigham Young University Hawaii Campus on the North Shore of Oahu in 1979. Actually I fell into it happenstance as I worked in the campus Sewage Treatment factory each morning, was a full time student during the day and at night, I’d put on my Jimmy Olsen – Cub Reporter hat and follow the BYU Hawaii Seasider sports teams all around Oahu and call in the results to the local Honolulu media.

One thing lead the preverbal another and suddenly within two weeks, I became the Sports Information Director for BYU Hawaii.   Now just how does that happen?   With no professional training, I was doing the sports marketing and publicity for this NAIA school, getting front page sports articles in the Honolulu newspapers and making the BYU Hawaii Administration VERY happy.

After doing this for about six months, I set my goals a bit higher and transferred to BYU’s main campus in Provo, Utah and before I graduated college four years later:

• I wrote and had published more than 2,000 newspaper and magazine sports, fashion, culinary, historic and political articles in publications all over the Western USA;

• Served as the Assistant Marketing Director for a major ski resort;

• Opened and was President of my own PR company;

• Served as Press Secretary for two US Congressional campaigns, and

• Was a member of the White House Advance Staff

I am sure I did a lot more, but I did promise this to be a cliff note version; and since this is a sports-themed book, lets pick up my personal narrative in the Year 1990, back again on the campus of Brigham Young University.

Chapter 2

Radio Days

So … the question is … should be it a song from YELLO or The Pet Shop Boys?

Actually, I’m somewhat partial to Billy Joel.

Forgive me for taking this moment to reminisce.

I am speaking about one very special evening in January 1990 and the choice music used to introduce the BYU Cougars during the home teams’ opening night of NCAA Men’s Volleyball.

A decade after graduating from Brigham Young, I reconnected with BYU’s exceptional Volleyball coach Carl McGown who was still at the helm of the BYU Cougars when the school’s athletic administration finally agreed to move the team into NCAA Division I status. McGown, now the official head coach of the BYU Cougars called me from his office within Smith Fieldhouse one day in early December 1989 and told me he needed a uniform sponsor for his new NCAA team.   

This is what happened.

***

McGown said that if I could persuade an athletic manufacturer to sponsor his team; and that I would come back to Provo, Utah to market and promote the first three home BYU NCAA Volleyball matches against Pepperdine, USC and UCLA then he would pay me $5,000.   

After graduating from BYU in the mid-1980’s, I moved to Orange County in Southern California and re-opened my own Public Relations company.   Business was pretty good and my firm was focused on clients in the home furnishings industries that manufactured decorative accessory manufacturers.   Going to trade shows in High Point, North Carolina was as about as far away from sports marketing that you can possible get. But who can turn away from an easy five grand?   It wasn't about the money … I just had the Volleyball bug again and wanted to see if I could capture lightening in a bottle just as I did back in 1980 during my college days when I worked with McGown in promoting his club Volleyball team.   He and I worked well together, packing in the on-campus Smith Fieldhouse arena to the rafters for McGown’s exhibition matches against the UCLA Bruins and USC Trojans.

So I said yes to McGown and immediately started working the phones with the local Southern California sales representatives who managed the sports marketing for manufacturers such as PUMA, NIKE and ADIDAS.   None of them panned out.   Then I called an old friend, Barbara Boskovich, who was doing the Western USA marketing for ASICS.   One thing led to another and within a few days, Barbara committed ASICS to a multi-year clothing sponsorship contract for BYU Volleyball worth $145,000.   Certainly not a fortune but it furnished McGown with the very best on and off court clothes for his players; as well as