Tokyo Olympics: golden girl Yang Qian nearly quit shooting to care for ill mother – but inspired by ‘five-star red flag flying is best medicine’
- A neighbour tells Yang Qian’s gold medal on Saturday was a dream come true for her parents and her hometown of Yangjianong in Ningbo
- Chinese social media explodes with pride and joy as Yang Qian becomes the first gold medallist of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics
Yang Qian’s seriously ill mother wanted the five-star red flag flying high and to be seen around the world – a wish that convinced the youngster to continue her shooting career and aim for Olympic gold, according to mainland media.
The neighbour said that five months after Yang enrolled in Tsinghua University to pursue economics and management, she thought of halting her studies and her shooting career.
But her mother, according to the neighbour, said: “As long as you get better grades, and let the five-star red flag fly high around the world, that is the best medicine for me.”
Moved by her mother’s words, Yang returned to training and her studies, even taking classes online during the Covid-19 pandemic, with renewed ambition to make her mother’s wish come true.
On Saturday, she fulfilled her dream as Yang set an Olympic record score of 251.8, edging ahead of Russian Anastasiia Galashina (251.1), with Switzerland’s Nina Christen (230.6) in the women’s 10m air rifle competition.
Her mother said she was proud of Yang’s performance but it was uncertain until the end with Galashina leading until the final round when the Chinese shooter overtook her for the gold.
“It was a very tense time, we were not sure what would happen until the very end,” she was quoted as saying by Sina Sport.
Yang’s historic victory prompted a swelling of national pride among Chinese social media users, with the International Olympic Committee hoping the Games will help the world take their minds of the Covid-19 pandemic for two weeks.
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“The first day of the first Olympics since the pandemic, in the first competition in Japan and the first song played was the Chinese national anthem,” wrote one Weibo user. “The person standing on the top of the podium was wearing a Chinese flag and the flag that rose to the highest point was the Chinese flag.”
Another wrote: “I don’t know why, but when I received the news I burst into tears.”
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Others were taken by how “cute” the baby-faced Yang looked during the competition and on the podium “She is great. I can see that she is a little girl who loves life and loves cute things,” wrote one user.
Yang was recruited to the Ningbo Sports School shooting team when she was in primary four. At the 2012 junior National Championships, she claimed a silver medal before snatching three gold medals in the provincial games two years later.
She was drafted into the national youth team in 2015. Yang scored sufficient points in the 2018 High School Examination in both sports-specific subjects and academics to get into Tsinghua University.
At the 2019 National Youth Games, she hit a score of 633 – which only three shooters in the China team were able to achieve – and was invited to be part of the national team.
In April, when China announced its shooting athletes for the Tokyo Games, Yang was selected after winning all four trials in the 10-metre air rifle.
