'One step at a time'
China's Fu Mingxia comes out of retirement
Posted: Tuesday March 02, 1999 01:55 PM
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Fu won springboard and platform at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, the first woman in 36 years to do so. Jed Jacobsohn/Allsport |
BEIJING (AP) -- She's back and, her coach says, she's diving even better than before.
Fu Mingxia, who won sports fans' hearts with Olympic gold medal performances in 1992 and 1996 and then broke them by retiring at age 19, is training again. If all goes well, she's aiming for a third Olympics in Sydney next year.
From the 12-year-old who became the youngest diving world champion in 1991, Fu has grown into a confident 21-year-old with a ready laugh and twinkling coffee-brown eyes. She's also added gold tints to her black hair.
Although she only resumed training in July after two years without a single dive, Fu shows little sign of inactivity.
In training sessions this week, Fu somersaulted, twisted and splashed cleanly off the platform, the event where she won her first Olympic gold in Barcelona in 1992, at just 13.
On the springboard, she was all compact, controlled, muscular grace. Fu won springboard and platform at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, the first woman in 36 years to do so.
She likened diving again to learning how to bicycle: "When you first start, you're all wobbly, but the more you ride, the smoother you become. That's the feeling," Fu said with a giggle.
Scouted at age 10 and brought to Beijing from her home in central Hubei province, Fu used to endure up to 8-9 hours of training a day. Such demanding regimens are typical of China's state-sponsored sports machine, which selects athletes young and molds them into champions.
When Fu retired after Atlanta, she said she was exhausted and -- at 19 -- too old. She enrolled at Beijing's prestigious Qinghua University and gained so much weight "I didn't want to put on a swimming costume," she sid. "I didn't really miss it."
Last summer, Fu had second thoughts. She had shed some weight, and Qinghua had set up a diving team. "I thought I'd come along and gie it a try, to see if it was still possible for me to be good," she said.
Ahead of her first platform dive, "I really was a little scared, but I had to pretend I wasn't," she said. "I wasn't very good. My splashes were very big."
Since then, "I've recovered very quickly, better than my coach and others expected. I can more or less do everything. I haven't forgotten."
Now, as part of Qinghua's team, Fu trains more than four hours a day, with weekends off. Techno-music thumped from a portable stereo by the pool as Fu scaled the platform and dived off, over and over again. She laughed at fluffed dives. She looked relaxed.
Yu Fen, her longtime coach, said Fu is enjoying her diving and is more self-motivated than when she was a youngster.
"She's turned this -- how should I put it? -- into a job, a profession, a thing to pursue, a challenge, something she feels she has to do. It's not like in the past when everyone made her to do it," Yu said. "Now she feels 'I have to do this, and I have to do this well.' "
Fu is not as physically fit as she was when she quit, but technically she's "even better in some areas than she was before," Yu said.
Fu's first test comes in March at a national competition. If all goes well, Olympic qualifiers are next. If she competes in Sydney, and again aims for the platform-springboard double, Fu could become the first diver to take five Olympic golds.
"Her goal, of course, is to pursue Olympic gold. An athlete who doesn't pursue Olympic gold is, I think, not a good athlete," Yu said. "But this is not her only goal."
By studying economics management in the morning and training afternoons, Fu could challenge a belief in China that top-level sports and studies don't mix. She could also prove that athletes, many of whom retire young in China, can come back.
"These are all explorations. If these explorations succeed it will play a good promotional role for sport in our country, including sports people of the future," Yu said. "What Fu Mingxia is doing is very significant."
Fu and Yu both add, however, that lots of hard work lies ahead.
"I'm starting from zero," Fu said. "I stepped down, so now I have to climb back up one step at a time."
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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