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Injured gymnast's teammates share sadness, fears
Posted: Saturday July 25, 1998 05:16 PM
BEIJING (AP) -- For years, Sang Lan and her Chinese teammates have shared the highs and lows of life as top-class gymnasts: the endless training, the excitement of competition, the painful tumbles. Now, 17-year-old Sang lies partly paralyzed in a hospital in the United States after a brutal fall at the Goodwill Games. Back in Beijing, her saddened teammates are having to learn to carry on without her and to overcome the fears of injury that are part of their gravity-defying sport. Chinese sports officials accompanied Sang's parents to Beijing's airport Saturday for a flight to New York so they could be at their only child's side. The night before their departure, Sang's teenage friends on the national team stayed up into the early morning hours to make birds out of folded paper: a total of 1,000 birds for Sang's parents to take with them that represents her teammates' wishes for a quick recovery. "She must be feeling very bad," said Liu Xuan, one of Sang's best friends on the team. "I just don't know what to say, I'm too sad." China trains its gymnasts from very young in special sports schools. The best like Sang, from east China, or her friend Liu, from south China, are picked to go to Beijing, where they train and live together far away from home and family. Head coach Lu Shanzhen said that while none of them have said so out loud, Sang's accident undoubtedly has made her teammates worry that they too could get seriously hurt. "This is the injury that those of us in gymnastics and the gymnasts worry about and fear most," he said. "They'll definitely be affected because they all know what the result of such an injury can be." Sang, the 1997 Chinese national vault champion, fractured and dislocated two neck vertebrae, leaving her with no movement in her legs, when she struck the mat with her head during a practice vault Tuesday night. She underwent seven hours of spinal surgery Saturday that doctors hope will help her regain mobility. Sang is in critical but stable condition after doctors fused two fractured and dislocated vertebrae in her neck. Doctors say she is unlikely to walk again. Lu, the national women's coach since 1993, said it was the worst injury in his career. While Lu later relented and allowed reporters to talk to Liu Xuan, Sang's friend, sports officials had said at first they did not want the gymnasts to be interviewed for fear it could upset them even further. On Saturday at their gym, Sang's teammates went through their paces, tumbling and spinning through their floor routines, jumping and somersaulting on the precarious beam, and spinning round and round on the uneven bars. To the untrained eye, everything seemed normal. But coach Lu said that since Sang's accident, her teammates "enthusiasm for training is not as high as it was before," To give them time and space to recover their spirits, Lu said he adjusted their schedule to cut down on training and has taken them jogging outside and to watch athletes in other sports train. Liu, Sang's friend, said she would avoid thinking "too much" about the possibilities of getting injured. "The level of danger is very high in gymnastics, so everyone gets injured from time to time," she said.
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