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August 16, 2016

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Home » City specials » Hangzhou

Hometown heroes make waves in Rio pool

By Xu Wenwen | August 16, 2016, Tuesday | Print Edition

HANGZHOU residents are glued to coverage of the swimming competition at the Rio Olympics, anxious to follow the hometown favorites.

The city has a history of producing world-class swimmers, including Sun Yang, Ye Shiwen and Fu Yuanhui, who are competing in Rio, and retired champions such as Luo Xuejuan, Wu Peng and Yang Yu.

In all, Hangzhou has produced 13 world-class swimmers, and much of the credit goes to the Hangzhou Chen Jinglun Sports School, which trained them all from an early age.

The local school takes students aged from preschool to 16 years, offering professional sports training as well as academic courses. Its swimming training is so highly acclaimed that the school has come to be known as “cradle of swimming world champions.”

Small wonder that Hangzhou parents line up to send their children to study there.

“We used to have to coax parents to allow their children to come to our school, but now they ask us to take their kids,” said Wu Ying, the first coach of Fu Yuanhui, who won bronze in Rio in the 100-meter backstroke last week.

But the Chen Jinglun school doesn’t take just every wannabe champion.

Every March the school’s swim coaches visit almost 200 kindergartens and elementary school first-grade students in the city, looking for potential talent. At first glance, those with long arms and legs merit further attention. At the end of the recruitment process, about 1,000 children are identified for enrollment and offers are sent to their parents.

During the summer vacation, those 1,000 children are trained and evaluated, paring the number down to 300. By the winter school break, the top 150 are chosen to continue at the school.

“It’s the first step for my child to become the next Sun Yang,” said a mother, who drives her son to the school every day.

“Maybe the Olympic dream is far-off for my daughter, but it’s gratifying for her to get motivation from ‘the cradle of swimming world champions,’” said the father of another trainee.

Rigorous training

The training is rigorous. Every afternoon, there is a two-hour session requiring the students to swim at least 5,000 meters. The training can’t be broken, so trainees get only one day a year off — Chinese New Year.

“The training program is more expansive here than at other amateur sports schools,” said Wu Yuling, deputy principal of the school.

Some trainees simply buckle under the pressure. Those who survive usually have strong support from their parents.

“Ye Shiwen’s father quit his job so he could take care of his daughter between training sessions,” said coach Zhu Ying.

Of course, not all students at the school go on to participate in the Olympics. After six or seven years of training, only the cream of the crop make China’s national team.

Nowadays around the pool at the school, students are abuzz about the Olympics.

“Sun is my idol,” Shanghai Daily heard one swimmer proclaim. “Maybe I can be a champion too someday.”

Indeed, Sun, Ye and Fu are role models for the students. And those icons would be the first to admit the sacrifices they had to make to climb to the top and the disappointments they have suffered along the way.

Ye, who won gold and set records in the 400-meter and 200-meter individual medleys in the 2012 Games, failed to make the finals this year.

She told the Qianjiang Evening News that she is physically and mentally tired.

“After the London Olympics, I am afraid of failure,” she told the newspaper. “To me, second or third place means failure.”

After 2012, Ye put on weight and her blood lactose levels fell. She became easily fatigued and was later diagnosed with moderate depression.

“Experience has taught me that life can’t be smooth forever,” she told the newspaper.

Sun, who thundered to Olympic gold in the men’s 200-meter freestyle, making him the first man to win three of the five Olympic freestyle titles, came under pressure after Australian swimmer Mack Horton publicly called him a “drug cheat.” The insult incited a social media firestorm, prompting Chinese officials to demand an apology from the Australian team.

Sun served a three-month doping ban in 2014, which was only announced retrospectively by Chinese authorities.

Born into a family of athletes, Sun always aspired to winning gold. He called his medal in the 200-meter freestyle a “tribute to my parents and coach.” When he lost out on gold in the men’s 400-meter freestyle, he told the media he had let his parents down.

Both his father Sun Quanhong and mother Yang Ming were once volleyball athletes. The couple accompanies their son to every competition at home and abroad.

Of the three big current stars, Fu is probably the happiest. Though she had to settle for bronze in the women’s 100-meter backstroke at Rio, she became an Internet phenomenon overnight.

When a Chinese journalist told Fu her time was 58.95 seconds in one of the heats, she gasped and looked shocked.

“Really? Was I so fast?” she exclaimed.

Asked if she felt she had done her best, Fu responded, “Yes, I am already very satisfied.”

Her animated facial expressions and exuberant joy at being in the Olympics regardless of medal considerations have won her fans worldwide.

Fu has been called by some media one of the “priceless faces lighting up the Olympics.” The US-based Huffington Post dubbed her the “most lovable athlete in Rio.” Her father Fu Chunsheng called her the “family’s pride and joy, the one who make jokes at the dinner table. We didn’t expect she would win a medal. It was only a dream — now come true.”

Hangzhou


 

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