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THE medal will bring about many changes for me. It will give me an opportunity to provide my parents a better life, especially my mother who worked so hard to support the family by knitting sweaters for others,” Zhou Yang said candidly in front of a pack of cameras after winning the women’s short track speed skating 1,500 meters final at the Vancouver Winter Olympics. The moment was echoed repeatedly on TV screens across China, plucking the heartstrings of tens of millions of Chinese people.
Humble Beginnings
The 18-year-old made an extraordinary debut as she set an Olympic record with a winning time of two minutes and 16.993 seconds, surpassing seven other skaters. While China has never won the women’s 1,500 meters in any previous Olympiads, Zhou’s performance gave China its third gold in Vancouver. Four days later she pocketed her second gold when she and her teammates took first in the women’s 3,000-meter relay.
As the young hopeful became a glorious national heroine, many of her fellow countrymen were intrigued by her solemn accounts of her family life. Reporters and curious citizens flooded to her home in Changchun, Jilin Province – a one-bedroom house that jointly serves as the sport lottery sales outlet her father runs. The furniture had been purchased over 20 years ago at her parents’ wedding, and the only valuable item in the 14-square-meter room is a LCD TV. As there is no space for a second bed, Zhou Yang would sleep on her parents’ bed with her mother when she returned home from the training camps, leaving her father spending the night on the floor. She once suggested that the family buy a bigger home. After a brief silence, the look on her father’s face made it clear that they could not afford it.
Hearing her daughter’s wish to give her parents a better life, her mother broke into tears, but insisted they would not take a cent from her. Nobody knows better than her parents how hard it has been for Zhou Yang to stand where she is now.
Training Hard
Zhou Yang started skating 12 years ago, as a first grader. That year she distinguished herself in a track and field meet at her school; it was there that her performance caught the eye of Cui Shunzi, a renowned national skating coach. Mr. Cui soon approached her parents and suggested that they let him recruit the girl into professional training, but he was unsurprised when they rejected his offer. Of the legion of professional athletes in the nation who go through excruciating training from an early age, only a handful will ever make a name for themselves on the national or international stage. The rest face a bleak future with limited job prospects after retirement. But after repeated visits and a promise to guarantee the girl’s school hours, Cui eventually won the parents’ approval. He was not so lucky with the other six children he had hand picked.
Zhou Yang’s father has never held down a regular job. He has peddled popsicles in the street, cooked fried chickens and now gets by on selling sport lottery tickets. Her mother has a disability, but is still able to bring in a tiny income by knitting sweaters at home. Throughout Zhou Yang’s memory, the family has always been chronically strapped for cash.
Knowing that her parents wouldn’t be able to afford the ice skates for training, which need to be changed according to the growth of her feet, young Zhou Yang always wore the leftover skates abandoned by her teammates, which were seldom the right size, and left blisters on her toes. All too often fresh blisters would pop up on the previous wounds, but the little girl never complained.
Encouraged by the potential that Zhou was showing, the parents did all they could to support her training. But there were moments they thought they couldn’t make it anymore. The training fee was RMB 50 per month in summer and RMB 100 in winter, a sum too great for a family with no steady income. Seeing no hope of raising the required funds, Zhou Yang’s father hardened his heart and said: “Baby, we’d better quit if we have to keep on paying.” Fortunately the girl was able to return to the rink after her coach persuaded the professional sporting school to waive the charges.
In 2006 Zhou Yang joined the national team, becoming its youngest member. Shy and quiet, the teenager displayed extreme fortitude on the ice. “You cannot imagine how cruel she is to herself,” said Li Yan, head coach of the national team. “If you tell her to practice a move ten times, she would double the amount. I never worry about her slacking in the training, but I do have to watch that she doesn’t overwork herself.” When asked about her coaches’ comments, Zhou Yang simply replied: “To be an athlete, one has to prepare for toughness. In difficult times the thought of my parents gives me the strength to push harder.”
After Success at the Olympics
With her whopping success at this year’s Olympics, Zhou Yang is now able to repay her parents, changing their life for the better as she has long wished. Usually an Olympic champion will receive awards from the General Administration of Sport, the provincial, municipal and district governments, in addition to a bundle of sponsorships from private enterprise in the form of cash and commodities, from villas to automobiles. Wang Hao, another Changchun native who won a men’s doubles table tennis gold, and silver in men’s single at the Beijing Olympic Games, received RMB 2 million from his province and city alone, and has been hounded by advertisers in the region. Bringing Jilin its first Olympic gold in a singles competition, Zhou Yang is predicted to see an even fatter award. In fact soon after her triumph in Vancouver, the Changchun government handed her parents the key to a new apartment. Even the local lottery authority brought them an envelope thick with cash.
Unrequited Dreams
The honors and bounties lavished on Zhou Yang and her parents have spurred on a cohort of skaters across the nation eyeing international prizes. But the reality is that few will finally make it. According to a coach with the Changchun Winter Sports Administration Center, where Zhou is registered, trainees at the center have to climb up the ranks of amateur, second-line and first-line teams before ever having the possibility of joining the national team. Only two thirds of those in the amateur group will reach the second-line rung, and fewer will make it to the first-line, a rise that takes at least four years and requires strict testing. Even for the lucky ones who ascend to the first-line niche, they know that there is no reason to stay in the career if they cannot secure a spot among the top eight in the national listing over a four-to-five-year period.
Top-level athletes enjoy certain state preferential policies for attending universities after retirement. But for many a diploma doesn’t improve their job perspectives to much extent. They face a narrow range of choices in the field of study, and the job market is tight for all, with the majority lacking decent savings to fall back on. For those without triumphs in national and international games, the salary is modest. It’s said Zhou Yang received merely RMB 500 per month from the Changchun Winter Sports Administration Center before her Olympic feat.
Preparing for the Future
The stark reality explains the steady drain in the reserve pool of Chinese athletes across all categories, provoking relevant authorities to find alternative solutions. The Changchun Sports School, the alma mater of Zhou Yang, comprehensively prepares its students for all future endeavors even outside of their sports careers in an effort to secure full enrollment. “Our students have three choices after graduation – become a high-level athlete; go to college through a cooperation agreement with the Jilin Sports University; or find jobs,” said Li Xiaojie, the school president. To ensure a smoother transition into society for its students, the school offers classes on sport physiology and sport anatomy as well as in other sciences, paving the road for its graduates to secure decent jobs with fitness clubs or public sports institutions in the event that they fail to move forward down the athletic road.
Rao Gang, director of the Changchun Winter Sports Administration Center, said that proper employment for retired athletes is a social issue that needs the attention of the whole nation rather than sporting circle alone. “The gold medallists worked hard to make important contributions to the nation, but can we deny those athletes who have also devoted themselves but perhaps did not achieve? Their contributions might not be as significant, but they still deserve our full attention.” He suggests one of the things the state can do for them is to raise the level of their retirement pensions, so that this group of people could have a better chance of coping with the obstacles to launching a second career.
In the splendor of Zhou Yang’s stunning success at the Olympics, the worry about uncertainties in at least one athlete’s future is eclipsed. The amateur team at the Changchun Winter Sports Administration Center recently saw a surge in applications. Many kids urged their parents to register their names, for they wish that someday they too could become a skating champion like their heroine Zhou Yang in the future.
Humble Beginnings
The 18-year-old made an extraordinary debut as she set an Olympic record with a winning time of two minutes and 16.993 seconds, surpassing seven other skaters. While China has never won the women’s 1,500 meters in any previous Olympiads, Zhou’s performance gave China its third gold in Vancouver. Four days later she pocketed her second gold when she and her teammates took first in the women’s 3,000-meter relay.
As the young hopeful became a glorious national heroine, many of her fellow countrymen were intrigued by her solemn accounts of her family life. Reporters and curious citizens flooded to her home in Changchun, Jilin Province – a one-bedroom house that jointly serves as the sport lottery sales outlet her father runs. The furniture had been purchased over 20 years ago at her parents’ wedding, and the only valuable item in the 14-square-meter room is a LCD TV. As there is no space for a second bed, Zhou Yang would sleep on her parents’ bed with her mother when she returned home from the training camps, leaving her father spending the night on the floor. She once suggested that the family buy a bigger home. After a brief silence, the look on her father’s face made it clear that they could not afford it.
Hearing her daughter’s wish to give her parents a better life, her mother broke into tears, but insisted they would not take a cent from her. Nobody knows better than her parents how hard it has been for Zhou Yang to stand where she is now.
Training Hard
Zhou Yang started skating 12 years ago, as a first grader. That year she distinguished herself in a track and field meet at her school; it was there that her performance caught the eye of Cui Shunzi, a renowned national skating coach. Mr. Cui soon approached her parents and suggested that they let him recruit the girl into professional training, but he was unsurprised when they rejected his offer. Of the legion of professional athletes in the nation who go through excruciating training from an early age, only a handful will ever make a name for themselves on the national or international stage. The rest face a bleak future with limited job prospects after retirement. But after repeated visits and a promise to guarantee the girl’s school hours, Cui eventually won the parents’ approval. He was not so lucky with the other six children he had hand picked.
Zhou Yang’s father has never held down a regular job. He has peddled popsicles in the street, cooked fried chickens and now gets by on selling sport lottery tickets. Her mother has a disability, but is still able to bring in a tiny income by knitting sweaters at home. Throughout Zhou Yang’s memory, the family has always been chronically strapped for cash.
Knowing that her parents wouldn’t be able to afford the ice skates for training, which need to be changed according to the growth of her feet, young Zhou Yang always wore the leftover skates abandoned by her teammates, which were seldom the right size, and left blisters on her toes. All too often fresh blisters would pop up on the previous wounds, but the little girl never complained.
Encouraged by the potential that Zhou was showing, the parents did all they could to support her training. But there were moments they thought they couldn’t make it anymore. The training fee was RMB 50 per month in summer and RMB 100 in winter, a sum too great for a family with no steady income. Seeing no hope of raising the required funds, Zhou Yang’s father hardened his heart and said: “Baby, we’d better quit if we have to keep on paying.” Fortunately the girl was able to return to the rink after her coach persuaded the professional sporting school to waive the charges.
In 2006 Zhou Yang joined the national team, becoming its youngest member. Shy and quiet, the teenager displayed extreme fortitude on the ice. “You cannot imagine how cruel she is to herself,” said Li Yan, head coach of the national team. “If you tell her to practice a move ten times, she would double the amount. I never worry about her slacking in the training, but I do have to watch that she doesn’t overwork herself.” When asked about her coaches’ comments, Zhou Yang simply replied: “To be an athlete, one has to prepare for toughness. In difficult times the thought of my parents gives me the strength to push harder.”
After Success at the Olympics
With her whopping success at this year’s Olympics, Zhou Yang is now able to repay her parents, changing their life for the better as she has long wished. Usually an Olympic champion will receive awards from the General Administration of Sport, the provincial, municipal and district governments, in addition to a bundle of sponsorships from private enterprise in the form of cash and commodities, from villas to automobiles. Wang Hao, another Changchun native who won a men’s doubles table tennis gold, and silver in men’s single at the Beijing Olympic Games, received RMB 2 million from his province and city alone, and has been hounded by advertisers in the region. Bringing Jilin its first Olympic gold in a singles competition, Zhou Yang is predicted to see an even fatter award. In fact soon after her triumph in Vancouver, the Changchun government handed her parents the key to a new apartment. Even the local lottery authority brought them an envelope thick with cash.
Unrequited Dreams
The honors and bounties lavished on Zhou Yang and her parents have spurred on a cohort of skaters across the nation eyeing international prizes. But the reality is that few will finally make it. According to a coach with the Changchun Winter Sports Administration Center, where Zhou is registered, trainees at the center have to climb up the ranks of amateur, second-line and first-line teams before ever having the possibility of joining the national team. Only two thirds of those in the amateur group will reach the second-line rung, and fewer will make it to the first-line, a rise that takes at least four years and requires strict testing. Even for the lucky ones who ascend to the first-line niche, they know that there is no reason to stay in the career if they cannot secure a spot among the top eight in the national listing over a four-to-five-year period.
Top-level athletes enjoy certain state preferential policies for attending universities after retirement. But for many a diploma doesn’t improve their job perspectives to much extent. They face a narrow range of choices in the field of study, and the job market is tight for all, with the majority lacking decent savings to fall back on. For those without triumphs in national and international games, the salary is modest. It’s said Zhou Yang received merely RMB 500 per month from the Changchun Winter Sports Administration Center before her Olympic feat.
Preparing for the Future
The stark reality explains the steady drain in the reserve pool of Chinese athletes across all categories, provoking relevant authorities to find alternative solutions. The Changchun Sports School, the alma mater of Zhou Yang, comprehensively prepares its students for all future endeavors even outside of their sports careers in an effort to secure full enrollment. “Our students have three choices after graduation – become a high-level athlete; go to college through a cooperation agreement with the Jilin Sports University; or find jobs,” said Li Xiaojie, the school president. To ensure a smoother transition into society for its students, the school offers classes on sport physiology and sport anatomy as well as in other sciences, paving the road for its graduates to secure decent jobs with fitness clubs or public sports institutions in the event that they fail to move forward down the athletic road.
Rao Gang, director of the Changchun Winter Sports Administration Center, said that proper employment for retired athletes is a social issue that needs the attention of the whole nation rather than sporting circle alone. “The gold medallists worked hard to make important contributions to the nation, but can we deny those athletes who have also devoted themselves but perhaps did not achieve? Their contributions might not be as significant, but they still deserve our full attention.” He suggests one of the things the state can do for them is to raise the level of their retirement pensions, so that this group of people could have a better chance of coping with the obstacles to launching a second career.
In the splendor of Zhou Yang’s stunning success at the Olympics, the worry about uncertainties in at least one athlete’s future is eclipsed. The amateur team at the Changchun Winter Sports Administration Center recently saw a surge in applications. Many kids urged their parents to register their names, for they wish that someday they too could become a skating champion like their heroine Zhou Yang in the future.