Christian Bauer was angry when China lost by a point to Ukraine in the women's sabre team final on Aug 14.
China's sabre head coach was not angry with the result, though China did squander a huge lead. He was instead hurt by China's attitude at taking a silver medal.
"They did not lose a gold medal for Christ's sake. They won a silver medal," said the 56-year-old Frenchman, who has voiced his disagreement with the gold-or-nothing attitude shown by Chinese athletes, coaches and officials.
Bauer's anger demonstrates some of the ideological difference between China and the west when it comes to sports.
Many coaches, who China hired to ensure a best-ever show at the home Games, struggle to adapt to an environment where most athletes are supported by the government, not clubs, and where the gold medal means everything.
Foreign coaches are asked to walk a tightrope, and any mistake or disagreement can carry grave consequences. The fate of German canoeing and kayaking coach Josef Capousek highlight how hard it can be to walk the line.
China's huge appetite for gold - and Capousek's failure to satisfy it - resulted in the sacking of the 62-year-old, who had led Germany to 17 Olympic gold medals in his long tenure, only 44 days before the Beijing Games.
Capousek pleaded that he wanted to make a long-term impact on China's training methods and wasn't interested in short-term fixes. But his plan was too far-sighted and never had a chance to work. China wanted medals now.
"I was thinking of leaving no more than one year after I joined. This was discouraging. Every evening I sat on my packed suitcase and thought: 'When does the plane leave tomorrow?'
"But then I said to myself, sometimes you have to fight your way rather than get intimidated by the adversity," Capousek told reporters.
A Chinese water sports official cited two reasons for Capousek's sacking: the poor performance of the team, and his failure to cope with his Chinese colleagues.
"Capousek is a legend and we all respect him. But our sports system always works like this. No matter who you are, it is quite impossible for one man to make such a huge difference overnight," said Wei Di, chief of China's water sports.
"If he brought us good results first, it would be easier for him to change certain things later on. But he insisted on his own way," Wei said.
In Capousek's place, Polish-Canadian Marek Ploch rejoined the team to coach defending champions Yang Wenjun and Meng Guangliang in the men's canoeing double.
Four years ago in Athens, Ploch surprised home fans by training the pair to win China's first-ever gold medal in canoeing. Chinese officials explained why they favor Ploch over Capousek.
"Ploch is different. If he is not happy with the training of certain athletes, he talks about the problem with local team leaders, who have an easier time communicating with the athletes," Wei said.
Frenchman Bauer also had problems at the beginning. Bauer had coached both France and Italy to Olympic success in the sabre team event, but he found Chinese athletes too obsessed with winning gold medals, something he thought distracted them from their training.
Chinese officials then invited Bauer for a chat and persuaded him to understand their eagerness for gold.
"We talked about China's modern history, China's eagerness to join the international community through the Games and what a gold medal would mean for Chinese fencers after a long wait of 24 years," Cai Jiadong, chief of China's fencing team, told Chinese media.
"Bauer told me he has come to understand us. He thought Chinese fencers, who are trained in a Chinese way, are both real fencers with style and potential champions," Cai said.
Even in China's weaker sports, officials expect a foreign coach to bring immediate change. Jim Lefebvre, for example, the American manager of China's baseball team, once complained Chinese officials demanded too much of the team, a team that had never even taken part in an Olympics. Lefebvre did deliver however, as China won its first-ever Olympic baseball game in Beijing.
Too much training
The gold-medal obsession is not the only headache foreign coaches face. A training schedule that some see as overbearing is another thing many foreign coaches struggle to adapt to.
"I found Chinese athletes trained too much in the past, even when they had injuries," Bauer said. "The first thing I did was to tone it down."
Tom Maher, the Australian coach of
China's women's basketball team, also said that the Chinese work harder than any other athletes he has seen.
"The logic here is: if two hours' training is good, four must be better. If you can do eight hours, then 12 is better still," Maher told AFP in an interview before the Olympics.
Like most coaches, Maher hoped he could give his athletes longer vacation time. But that would not be possible without good results.
"The Chinese officials let me to do it (cut the training schedule) only after I helped the Chinese to perform well at the 2006 Doha Asian Games," he said.
Disagreements with sporting officials also led to the dismissals of two soccer coaches right before the Olympics: Serbian Ratomir Dujkovic and Frenchwoman Elizabeth Loisel.
Still, many foreign coaches have found success in China and have led their teams to historic breakthroughs at the Beijing Games.
Spain's Juan Jane Giralt coached the women's water polo team to a record fifth place, while Japan's Masayo Imura helped the synchronized swimmers win a first-ever bronze medal.
The most successful coach has been South Korean Kim Chang-back, the field hockey coaching guru who has been in China for nine years. His team finished second behind the Netherlands and won a historic silver medal.
"We have rewritten the history for China's hockey," Kim said proudly.
The foreign influence on Chinese athletes has been a two-way street - some athletes have traveled overseas for private lessons with some surprising results. Swimmer Zhang Lin, after a short private training session with Grant Hackett's former coach Denis Cotterell, won China's first silver medal in men's swimming.
