Feature: She Triple Jumps to Glory

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, November 23, 2001

Feature: She Triple Jumps to Glory

A village girl from south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region made Thursday her final step of a triple jump to a victory, which surpassed the Asian record.

A village girl from south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region made Thursday her final step of a triple jump to a victory, which surpassed the Asian record.

There it goes the three steps of Huang Qiuyan's triple jump: from a poverty-stricken family into the Regional athletic team, national champion title at China's eighth national games in Shanghai in 1997, and here on Thursday, bettering the Asian record at ninth national games.

Huang was listed to take on the ground in the final as the 13th athlete. Listed before Huang was Ren Ruiping, a master hand who set the Asian record of 14.66 meters in 1997.

Huang beat Ren at the eighth national games, by eight centimeters. Despite this, the pressure from Ren on Huang kept strong.

"I am quite nervous actually," admitted the winner. "But when I saw she was also not sure about herself and only managed a 13.73 meters in her first jump, I was on my feet again."

Huang scored an excellent leap of 14.47m, and it was just a beginning.

When Huang first took the field, she did not even own a pair of suitable sports shoes.

"Though indocile, she trains very hard and learns fast," said her coach Zhang Donghong.

When she first became the national champion four years ago, she was even not a regular member of the team. A couple of years were enough for her to reign at the eighth national games.

Four years more training enabled Huang to surpass the Asian record. And her coach was just too excited. Huang is the only gold hopeful for Guangxi as their athletics team had suffered series of unexpected defeats.

When asked how much potential she could explore, a smiling Huang said: "I don't know. Let's just wait and see."

A girl of few words, triple jump has made Huang more confident as well as laugh more freely.

A new "triple jump" is ahead for her: from next year's Asian Games, to the 2004 Olympics and further to the 2008 Olmpics in Beijing.

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