Source: CCTV.com
02-08-2008 11:06
Special Report: 2008 Beijing Olympic GamesWe continue the "To Be The Best" series with a look at Yang Wei, an all-round gymnast and a veteran of 11 years of China's national team. He's one of China's top gold medal hopes for the up-coming Beijing Olympic Games. With only a few months to go before the big event, Yang Wei and his team are undergoing intense training and feeling the pressure that comes along with it. To get an idea of how things are going with the former Olympic and world champion, let's go back to the 2004 Athens Olympics.
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| Yang Wei(File photo) |
For Yang Wei and his national gymnastics teammates, the 2004 Athens Olympic Games was one to remember. But it wasn't a happy memory. That's because China, the team champions in the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, were dealt a crushing blow. The whole team, including captain Yang Wei himself, wound up losing their form, and with it the title. It almost shattered Yang Wei's spirit.
Yang Wei said, "Me and my coach went back to the village with no words or appetites,and there's something that I must say to my coach."
Huang Yubin, China Gymnastics Team Coach, said, "We walked towards our dorms in silence, and as we got near the door, the distraught young man suddenly knelt down in front of me and said 'I'm so sorry teacher, I have let you down.' I held him up and said 'It's OK'."
Yang Wei said, "The only feeling inside me was guilt. I felt guilty because I failed to keep alive our team spirit the way many of my former teammates had. I didn't live up to my coach's expectation, nor the amount of sweat and blood all of us had shed in the past four years."
Soon after Athens, Yang Wei attended the International Gymnastics Invitational in his hometown, and entertained his foreign gymnast friends at home. Having already been with the national team for seven years, he was thinking about retirement. But his coach had other ideas.
Yang Wei said, "I wanted very much to persuade him not to give up. I went with him on a 10-day hiking and sightseeing trip in the mountains, and I would tell him whenever I could how the rule changes would benefit him. Then on our way back he finally told me not to worry, and said he'd never give up as he'd made up his mind to go for the Beijing Olympics."
Yang Wei stayed with the team. And his efforts and persistence saw him shine once again at the 2006 World Gymnastics Championships in Denmark. Yang Wei became a double champion by winning both the rings and the parallel bars, along with the valuable team gold he and his teammates had lost in Athens.
Last year's World Championships in Germany saw Yang Wei's performance rise to a new level. He out-paced his nearest rival by a staggering 3.35 points after the first five events. Even a horrifying slip on the horizontal bars later didn't cost him the top spot.
However, Yang took the error very seriously, posting his "hand-slipping" picture on his blog for all his fans to see.
Yang Wei said, "It was the result of me losing guard, more or less, so I'd like it to serve as a wake-up call."
