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Factfile on Cai Yuyan, Winner of Women's Synchronized 10m Platform
Cai Yuyan, who paired with Guo Jingjing to win the women's 10m platform title at the 21st Universiade Tuesday, is a slim, soft-spoken woman with a gentle smile. She blushes as she talks to someone she is not familiar with.
"If I can defeat myself, I can defeat everyone else," she said on the eve of the Universiade. And so she did.
Born on July 13, 1982, Cai is a native of the southern Chinese province of Guangdong. She joined the national team in 1996 at the age of 13. Since then, she have pulled off a string of successes in various national and international competitions.
Cai won her first international contest in 1996, when she took two gold medals - in the 1m springboard and the synchronized 10m platform - in FINA Grand Prix competitions in New Zealand.
Two years later, she grabbed two silver medals at the 1998 Swimming World Championships in Perth, Australia, in the women's individual as well as synchronized 10m platform. Later that year, she snatched a gold in the synchronized platform event at the Goodwill Games in New York, and also won a silver in the individual event there.
Other crowns Cai obtained in 1998 include a national championships title and a Asian Games title, both on highboard.
In 2000, Cai took part in the World Cup in Sydney, where she clinched a bronze in the individual platform and combined with her teammates to win the team title for China.
She competed in the East Asian Games earlier this year and won a silver on the highboard.
In her spare time, Cai reads a lot and she loves beautifully written essays particularly. She also likes surfing the Internet for news.
As the elder of the two daughters in her family, Cai feels guilty as she can't stay with her parents a lot. Her parents understand and support her in her devotion to diving, but they can't help feeling worried when Cai suffers injuries during training. In 1999, Cai broke her head during training prior to the World Cup diving meet in New Zealand. She didn't tell her parents about it. "I was afraid they would be worried," she said.
Cai is studying international finance at Zhongshan University, one of the prestigious universities in China.
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