Some countries build Olympic glory on a heritage in particular sports. Brazil's success in soccer starts on the beaches and in the favellas of Rio de Janeiro. US basketball begins on the streets. Kenya's distance athletes get their start by running to school each day.
In China, the wheels of sport spin in a different way.
Basketball and soccer are two of the most popular sports in China. They are also guilty of having made the least progress internationally. Apart from a silver medal at Atlanta 1996 in women's soccer, they have been continual disappointments to the millions desperate for even the slightest flicker of success.
Soccer takes the proverbial biscuit. Even an Olympic Games on home turf couldn't shake the team out of its mess of internal politics, coaching debacles and woeful play.
Ratomir Dujkovic was sacked as head coach just 22 days before the Games were due to open. The Serb's dismissal came after a baffling, yet apparently ferocious, fight with the sport's administrators.
When the Olympic squad was first assembled, hopes were high that intensive preparation would knock the carefully selected team into shape and shake off some of the controversies surrounding the game by challenging for a medal. It didn't take long for the squad to revert to form - the low point being a brawl in a training match against English second-tier side Queen's Park Rangers in London in 2007.