It was only well after local sports officials had decided that Yang Yali was just the right shape and size to be a world-class kayaker that the tall, broad-shouldered girl from Ya’an, in Sichuan province, actually found out what a kayak was. She could not even swim. “When I first saw the boat, I was terrified,” recalls Yang, who was 14 when she was recruited in 1997. “Coming from a village, I was scared by any deep water – and now I had to go out paddling in a boat.” Yet in an illustration of the power of China’s state-directed sports system, Yang became a world-class kayaker.

On a hot summer afternoon in Germany’s Ruhr valley 10 years later, I saw her help power a four-woman kayak across 500m of the Duisburg regatta course in less than one minute and 39 seconds, fast enough to win China a coveted right to compete in the event at next month’s Olympic Games.