I thought so hard about this when my friend asked me this question today.
I'm not jealous about China's achievement or any other country for that matter, but I'm both jealous and happy at Phelps' achievement, guess his record can only be broken if ever after next 50 years
In my country India, we work like bees, the hive mentality makes us go to schools in droves , blame population too. We go to colleges from schools and again in big numbers, suddenly almost everyone graduates and we go to either Engineering colleges or Medical colleges in droves again.
I know this because because i was one of them, what we need is not just follow a set career path chosen by parents or someone else, but instead follow our dreams , sounds cliched. But that is the way to happiness, do what you have to do guys, you wanna swim go swim, You wanna build homes do that, wanna do rock climbing do that.
How would you know what you are good at unless you try different things, this part ends the personal inspiration part of it.
Someone said success is 5% inspiration and 95 % perspiration. Where do we perspire if we don't have the right facilities, what Chinese did was as soon as they knew that 2008 Olympics has come to Beijing in 2001 they started a program where they trained people in all disciplines in droves. I don't think we need that but we definitely need the following,
Facilities,
Administration,
Sponsorship,
Encouragement at the basic level,
Coaches,
Rewards and recognition.
I don't mean to belittle our 1 gold and 2 bronze medals, but seriously guys if Phelps was a nation, he has beaten us by a long shot.
lets start thinking of the next competition.

For the latest news : http://metalatem.blogspot.com