UNIT 20 Disability

　Competing for honour and life

The 122-member delegation, including 87 disabled athletes, was the largest team China had ever sent to the event, which started last week.

All the participants, ranging in age from 13 to 43, are amateur athletes from 22 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities. For 65 of them, it is the first time they have participated in the Games.

In their everyday lives they are quite different, being manual workers, farmers, civil servants, students, technicians, soldiers and self-employed workers.

For the Paralympics they were united, with one goal - to bring honour to China and its 60 million disabled people, around 5 per cent of the country's population.

All of the athletes have undergone intensive training in Nanjing, Kunming, Fuzhou, Xi'an and Tianjin to make sure they can do their best at the Games.

They will participate in track and field events, swimming, table tennis, weight-lifting, judo and shooting.

The number of athletes going to Sydney this year is more than twice the number who went to the 96' Atlanta Paralympics, showing the vigorous development of disabled sports in China.

The athletes are expected to do better than last time, when they won 16 gold medals.

Sports for the disabled in China started late. But in the past decade it has progressed well. Chinese athletes first attended the Paralympic Games in 1984 and got involved in various international competitions for the disabled. In total, they have won more than 1,600 gold medals and broken 170 world records in international games.

Natural for sports

Xu Hongyan, 24, looks too slim to be a shot-putter. But in the 10th Paralympic Games in Atlanta, she won the gold medal in the F12 shot-put class.

"I was a natural for sport because I was much taller than other girls in my class at primary school," said Xu.

At her sports school in Nantong, a city in Jiangsu Province, she trained in the high jump, long jump and shot-put. But at the age of 18, she was blinded in her left eye when her retina became detached.

"My dream to join the national track and field team was broken and I became a teacher in the School for Deaf-mutes in Nantong," she said. "But I still could not give up sport. When I heard about the Paralympic Games, I decided to join in."

It is dangerous for her to train too hard because the great pressure on her eyes in training could make her eyesight worse.

"I know I am walking a tightrope, but I am not afraid of facing the challenge," she said confidently.

In her spare time, Xu teaches herself English. "I want to overcome language barriers in Sydney," she smiled.

According to Sun Haitao, Xu's boyfriend and teammate, Xu is also a super cook.

Wheelchaired weightlifter

It is the second time Bian Jianxin, a 25-year-old woman from Inner Mongolia, has participated in the Paralympic Games.

Seven months after she was born, she got polio. Her wheelchair became her lifelong partner.

But this self-motivated girl was extremely strong-willed. She went to school regularly and did well in her studies. After graduating from junior middle school, she went to a vocational school to study accounting and later worked at the Minzheng Crane Plant in Baotou, the capital of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

A massage therapist in her spare time, one day when massaging a disabled athlete, she was encouraged to have a go at weightlifting.

Bian turned to Li Weipu, a coach at the amateur sports school of the Baotou Iron and Steel Company. On her first go, she lifted 40 kilograms - not much more than what she weighed herself.

She lifted a total weight of more than 20,000 kilograms every day in two or three hours of training. She longed for success and was sure it would come.

At the World Weightlifting Championship for the Disabled in Australia in April 1994, Bian took part in the 40-kilogram class competition. She broke the world record three times, winning three gold medals.

The chairman of the International Olympics Weightlifting Committee got down from his seat to congratulate her, even kneeling down to give her a kiss.

"I felt so proud when I saw the national flag being raised and heard the national anthem being played," said Bian. "I wanted to cry, but I held back my tears.

"The disabled should face life with a smile and I don't ever shed any tears over my situation," she said.

Jumping high

Huang Wentao, 31, looks handsome and at first glance, you would perhaps not realize he is blind. He has congenital cataracts, which means he can see strong light, but nothing of the world around him.

His mother, a high school teacher in Shanghai, and his father, an office worker, did not earn much but tried everything they could to help him.

"My parents encouraged me to face my disability with a strong will," said Huang.

At the age of eight he was sent to a school for blind children in Shanghai.

"At the beginning, everything in the school was new to me, but soon my curiosity waned and I asked my mother to keep me at home," he said. "But she gave me a hug and carried me back to school. She decided I should live and study like a normal boy instead of hiding at home."

At school, Huang studied hard and became a top student in all of his subjects. In his spare time he developed many interests. He learned to play the flute and joined the school band. He was also an amateur reporter on Shanghai Little Masters Newspaper, a local newspaper for children.

At the age of 15, Huang began his track and field sports training. "Watching me go to train with the coach every afternoon, my parents seemed to have some hope for me," he said.

Huang did not let his parents down. He brought home awards and medals time and time again. In the 9th Paralympic Games in Barcelona, he set a world record for the long jump in the F11 class and won the gold medal. Four years later, in Atlanta, he won gold in the triple jump.

Now Huang has a wife and a five-year-old daughter. But because he often trains in other cities, he does not have enough time to take care of his family.

"When I get back from Sydney, I want to try something new," Huang said. He said he once learned massage and acupuncture, and now wants to set up a health centre. "And I will spend more time with my family," he said.

Fight for bright future

With a degree in journalism from Nanjing University, Sun Haitao has won dozens of medals in discus, shot-put and javelin in national and international games.

His father is a basketball coach and Sun started playing sport from a very young age. But when he was five, hepatitis B made him blind.

Sun was a strong-willed boy and refused to give up his training. In 1993 he was admitted to the Sports School in Heilongjiang Province with a better score than other students in general knowledge and sports tests.

In 1996, Sun won three gold medals in the discus, shot-put and javelin sections in the F12 category in the 10th Paralympic Games.

"I did not want to give up my academic studies for sports training after graduating from sports school," Sun said.

Because he had been so often trained in Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu Province, Sun wanted to go to college there. In September 1998, Nanjing University accepted him.

"Nanjing University offered me a rare chance and I will not let them down," he said proudly.

"I treasure life on campus. All the professors and classmates treat me kindly and fairly, the same as everybody else. After the Paralympic Games I will return to them."