ATHLETICS:Heart-breaking reports and pictures from Sichuan have perhaps helped changed attitudes toward the Beijing Olympics, writes Ian O'Riordan

IN A shocking and deeply saddening way it's taken something as, literally, seismic as an earthquake itself to put a sporting event back in context. After several months where the build-up to the Beijing Olympics seemed to intensify Western fear and suspicion of China, the earthquake that devastated parts of the Sichuan province in the southwestern part of the country has almost completely changed the mood.

Suddenly, China has become a country of people again, like ours, and like any other. It so happens they have 1.3 billion of them; but they are still 1.3 billion individuals, and as individuals, no more or no less than the 4.3 million that live in this country.

The Sichuan earthquake was a cruel reminder of that. No one can accurately predict the final death toll - 50,000 seems conservative - but the area devastated is roughly the size of Belgium and the numbers touched by the disaster will run well into the hundreds of thousands.

That so many schoolchildren lost their lives has made for particularly disturbing reading. No one has ever been a true fan of China's one-child policy, despite its practical necessity, and the reports of parents sifting through the rubble of buried schools in towns such as Beichuan and Dujiangyan, then finding the bodies of their only child, were truly shattering.

For these mothers and fathers, and the other individuals whose lives have been irreparably altered, the Beijing Olympics will not matter a damn.

If, however, the Sichuan earthquake has such a thing as a heartening side then it's been the reaction of the Chinese government. So much of the apparent scepticism and unease at Beijing's hosting of the Olympics is that China is still run by a sinister lot and the old habits of secrecy still rule. In certain situations maybe that is still true, but the government's reaction to the earthquake has defied all expectations with its frank openness and genuine concern.

Hearing that the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, flew immediately to the disaster area was no great surprise, but seeing pictures of him crawling into collapsed buildings to urge survivors to hang on certainly was. This and the massive mobilisation of troops and appeal for aid could not have contrasted more to the reaction to the 1976 earthquake that destroyed the city of Tangshan, killing some 240,000, the Chinese government at the time effectively denying it even happened.

On Wednesday, China's State General Administration of Sport - another former bastion of secrecy - called on the country's sporting bodies to assist in the appeal for aid. At a hastily arranged fundraising ceremony in Beijing, the reigning world and Olympic 110-metre hurdles champion, Liu Xiang, announced his contribution of 500,000 yuan (about €50,000). By the end of the day they had around 500 athlete donations from 22 national teams, plus a five-million yuan contribution from the Chinese Olympic Committee.

All this could be perceived as a political stunt, but just as with the Chinese government, there are some clear signs of a new openness in Chinese sport.

Liu has been one of the faces of the Beijing Olympics ever since in Athens four years ago he became China's first male track gold medallist. Unlike many of his predecessors, Liu has nothing secret or mysterious about him. He races everywhere. He talks to everyone. He's open about who and what he is.

"I believe I achieved a modest miracle for the yellow-skinned Chinese people and the Asian people," he said after his sprint hurdles victory in Athens. And for many Chinese people he did overcome what they perceived as a genetic disadvantage in terms of competing for a major sprint title.

The only question about Liu is whether he can handle the pressure of 1.3 billion people and win the gold medal in August. So far, he's not letting the pressure get to him, and last Saturday in Osaka, at one of the first IAAF Grand Prix meetings of the summer, he won the 110-metre hurdles in an easy 13.19 seconds.

Six other Chinese athletes won in Osaka: Zhang Wenxiu (women's hammer), Huang Xiaoxiao (women's 400-metre hurdles), Li Meiju (women's shot), Song Aimin (women's discus), Hu Kai (men's 100 metres) and Liu Xiaosheng (men's 400 metres).

Until recently, Chinese athletes had an iffy reputation for skipping all Grand Prix meetings, only to show up at the major championships and run riot.

The most notorious example was at the 1993 World championships in Stuttgart, where Chinese athletes belonging to the infamous Ma Junren school of distance running (a marathon a day, turtle soup, etc) suddenly appeared and claimed six of the nine medals on offer between the 1,500, 3,000 and 10,000 metres - including all three gold. Sonia O'Sullivan's silver from the 1,500 metres was the main beacon of hope for the rest of the world.

Almost as suddenly, most of them disappeared again, but in the record books, those performances come with an invisible asterisk. For years afterwards, no Chinese athlete was easily trusted.

It didn't help that seven Chinese swimmers were found doping at the 1994 Asian Games, while just before the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, 40 Chinese were suddenly withdrawn from the team having reportedly failed a blood doping test.

It's been hard to shake off that reputation. China did not fail a single drugs test at the Athens Olympics, but Huina Xing's highly surprising victory in the women's 10,000 metres generated a few whispers in the press tribune. And it was a case of "told you so" when her team-mate Yingjie Sun was done for drugs shortly afterwards.

Yet slowly, perhaps like the Chinese government, Chinese athletes are emerging from obscurity and relative secrecy. The seven events they won at Osaka may be an indication of the sort of medal haul they'll produce at the Olympics, although chances are they'll still be seen as appearing from nowhere.

It's saddening to think it still takes something as terrible as an earthquake not only to put a sporting event back in context but also to help us see the Chinese people as individuals.