Two years ago, there was a saying that according to the development speed of China's sports industry at that time, there existed a gap of 10,000 local sports professional managers. With the 2008 Beijing Olympiad approaching day by day, China's sports industry has also greeted its period of flourish development. At the same time, the cultivation of sports management talents becomes more imminent.

The first one that is in want of talents is the Olympic Games. As the Olympic Games is a very complicated systematic project, absorption and training of talents is important for normal running of the Olympic Games. By 2008 when the Olympic Games will be held, the total staff of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad(BOCOG) will amount to about 4,000 people; and such a figure simply presents an imminent demand for talents.

Not only is the Olympic Games in want of talents. Just take the sports goods industry as an example. China's sports goods market is growing at an annual rate of over 50 percent, among which products made in China have accounted for 65 percent in the world's sports goods market at present. Such a huge market and such prosperous demands have brought up the three sports goods producing bases in Guangdong, Fujian and the Changjiang River Delta with over 10,000 sports goods manufacturers where a new type of management talents with their modern professional knowledge and skills are also needed. Also, numerous sports clubs and sports service facilities are in want of management talents.

The cultivation of talents for the sports industry started from the sports management discipline at the very beginning. Such a discipline originated during the 1960s. At that time, many universities in the USA opened courses in such an aspect out of the professional perspective. The USA has been leading in the world in terms of the development of the sports industry and it also leaves other countries far behind in the cultivation of talents for the sports industry. By the 1990s, there had been over 200 educational programs of sports management in the USA.

In the face of a lack of sports management talents in China, relevant parties have adopted a modus operandi of active responsiveness: the cultivation of sports industry management talents has been included in the 25 new specialties for the 2006 student recruitment process for higher education released by the Ministry of Education; and to adapt to the demands for holding the 2008 Beijing Olympiad, the General Administration of Sport even puts forth plans on the cultivation of high-level sports talents, including high-level administrative management talents, high-level sports industry management and administration talents, talents in dealing with foreign affairs concerning sports/high-level sports academic and technological talents, high-level international sports organization talents, etc.

Higher education institutions like Fudan University, Tsinghua University, Peking University, Beijing Sports University, Beijing Normal University, and Capital Institute of Physical Education, etc. and certain social institutions have also put forth their respective sports management programs in succession. For instance, Fudan University's sports MBA program is the first MBA program targeted on the sports industry in China, which is an MBA program targeted on the sports industry specially started for the medium and high-level management personnel in the Chinese Olympic Committee(COC) and China's sports systems. Courses of sports industry management account for over 40 percent of the total credit hours. Tsinghua University has started a masters program in sports management jointly with the University of Technology, Sydney(UTS), and Beijing Sport University has started workshops for in-job postgraduates that teach courses for the discipline of sports management and administration together with the China Youth Advanced Talent Training Center. It can be said that while preparations for the Olympic Games are being made vigorously, a fight for sport management talents is also being put up silently.

Recently, Beijing Sport University's College of Management announced that the professional sport manager training and authentification program jointly sponsored by Asia Association for Sport Management and the China Training Center of Senior Civil Servants under the Ministry of Personnel would be officially launched this July. This program will be launched with the aim to take up to train senior management personnel being provided with excellent professional accomplishment with a mastery of professional knowledge and professional skills for China's sports industry according to the Central Government's directives of"building up a team of professional managers and pressing on with studies on setting criteria for aptitude authentification and rules for market access with the gradual implementation of the system of professional qualification" and"setting up a capability and performance oriented scientific and socialized mechanism for talent assessment".

Qin Chunlin, Dean of Beijing Sport University's College of Management, introduced that the professional sport manager training and authentification program took up with setting up a system of examination and assessment suitable for talents running and managing sports enterprises with modern talent assessment technologies applied, which is aimed to building up a team of professional sports managers, exploring for the gradual implementation of the professional qualification system for the sports industry and the system of market access, and providing qualified talents on management and administration for the healthy and rapid development of China's sports industry.

It can be said that the sports MBA program of Fudan University, Tsinghua University's masters program in sports management, and Beijing Sport University's professional sport manager training and authentification program will all become driving forces for the development of China's sports industry in the coming years. With the gradual spreading of such educational and training programs, there will emerge a large quantity of local professional sports managers in China. It is the same in the sports industry as in other industries: those who obtain talents will win out in the market.

Editor: Yan