After dominating the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Chinese sport is well and truly on the world map.

However, finding original and insightful information about China's sporting achievements in English is certainly not easy. That is where China Sports Today comes in, with fresh content about all of China's sports from a non-Chinese perspective.

Based in Beijing, China Sports Today editor Maggie Rauch moved to China more than three years ago from the United States. Starting out in Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, she has now been in Beijing for almost three years.

She combines her love of sports with the editing and writing skills she picked up working as a magazine editor in New York to create a unique and interesting take on China's sports scene.

"I started doing the blog in early 2008. I had been writing some sports stories for gokunming.com, and the two guys who run that offered to help me get a sports blog started," she said. "I was mostly writing about golf and football, but noticed that there wasn't a good English-language source for Chinese sports news, so I started the blog."

This was ideal for Rauch, who has "loved sports all her life, but more as a player than a fan".

She said she played basketball daily as a child and in college focused on basketball, water polo, and occasionally lacrosse.

"In New York I played water polo for the New York Athletic Club," she added.

Rauch caters to two main audiences with her blog: foreigners who are living or have lived in China and want to keep up with this aspect of Chinese culture, and people who work in sports and want a better understanding of China's emergence in the sporting world.

She said the most interesting aspect of Chinese sport right now is the development, from local recreational participation to improvements in training and a larger discerning fanbase, then added that Li Na's recent run to the final of the Australian Open is a good example of this.

"I didn't write much about her style of play," Rauch said. "Instead, I was interested in how she's taken advantage of having more freedom from the Chinese tennis federation, how Chinese people feel about her success and what commercial opportunities it has opened up for her."

Although she believes the development has been outstanding over the last decade, Rauch said sports culture in China is still far behind when compared to the top Western nations.

"I think that as China has developed in the past, say, 20 years, its sports culture has remained very far behind," she said. "I also do some writing about the travel industry and it strikes me that sports is a good 10 years or more behind travel in terms of the international element."

Despite the need for continued progress, Rauch has experienced many sporting highlights since starting the blog.

"One of my favorite things about being in China is having guests here from home. When it comes to the blog, I've really enjoyed spending time with people from the American sports world and seeing how they encounter China and Chinese sports," she said.

"I traveled around South China with the University of Memphis men's basketball team and legendary coach John Calipari in 2008; spent a day taking Steve Kelly, a sports writer from the Seattle Times, around Beijing at the start of the Olympics; spent some time in Beijing with a former NBA player who was considering coming here to play in the CBA, and had lots of barstool conversations with people who are here from the US training athletes or trying to grow a sport here."

She has also been impressed with local pioneers who are trying to do something different, as well as the chance to get involved in sport herself.

"Since I'm an athlete, I've had the opportunity to mix it up with some teams here, which is an incredible experience," Rauch said.

"In Kunming, I practiced several times with the Yunnan women's basketball team and played in a scrimmage with the national women's football team.

"In Beijing, I play water polo regularly with the Beijing water polo team and I've even got in the ring with a member of the Beijing boxing team."

China Daily

(China Daily 02/16/2011)