Gold medal winner Kayla Harrison tells INSIDE EDITION what it feels like to win a gold medal and overcome challenges. Meanwhile, popular methods of Olympic training among the Chinese are coming under the microscope.
She's just won the first-ever gold medal for the United States in the judo competition. And hot off her victory, Kayla Harrison tells INSIDE EDITION's Paul Boyd just what it took to reach the top.
Boyd asked, "What did it mean to you to bring home the gold?"
"You sweat, and you cry, and you bleed, and you wonder if it's all going to be worth it. I can tell you, it's worth it," said Harrison.
This 22-year-old star wept as she stood with her medal, having overcome more challenges than most athletes.
Her former coach, Daniel Doyle, is serving 10 years in prison for having sexually abused Kayla Harrison, and she wants to make sure that such a thing doesn't happen to other young athletes.
Harrison said, "Parents need to be careful with who they trust their children with. When it comes to sports, we are almost blindsided because we want our children to succeed. We want them to be the best."
What price success? That's what some are asking about the extraordinary performance of 16-year-old Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen, a gold medalist some suspect of using performance-enhancing drugs. The Chinese deny it.
CBS News Correspondent Mark Phillips said, "The Chinese went ballistic in response, saying that this was effectively racism, that she's been tested a dozen times."
Another Chinese shocker: gold medal diver Wu Minxia was reportedly not told for a year that her grandparents had died, for fear it would interrupt her training routines.
"We know that the Chinese take their profile in international sports extremely seriously," said Phillips
How seriously?
YouTube videos show young Chinese athletes in training. In the video, a coach kicks and pushes a kid into the proper position.
And the faces of the young chinese kids really show the strain.
Phillips said, "They find talented kids who have aptitude at a young age, they move them into special training sessions and they drive them pretty hard."
