From: xiong@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Bo Xiong)
Subject: [Olympics] Sport Hot Shots: Huang Zhihong
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 11:35:44 -0500

The following was carried in CND-Global (July 26, 1992):

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4. Sport Hot Shots: Huang Zhihong......................................109
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From:    Charles P. Mok
Source:  Sports Illustrated, 7/22/92
By:      Franz Lidz

Huang Zhihong speaks spontaneously, like somebody  just  out  of  solitary
confinement.   She  sings  spontaneously,  too.   Huang, the women's world
champion in the shot put, did some extemporaneous crooning last fall at  a
Karaoke  songathon  attended  by  nearly 10,000 of the People's Republic's
people.

"She had the worst voice,  positively,"  says  Yang  Yingming,  a  Chinese
sports editor. "But everyone liked her the best."

"I sound like a cow," offers Huang, through a translator.

"Not a cow," corrects Yang. "Like every barnyard animal combined."

Huang laughs.  She's a splendidly ample woman - 220 pounds on a 5'7" frame
- with a good, strong face: smooth, clear skin; lively, vivid eyes.

Called Lao Huang (Old Huang) because she's still competing at the  ancient
age  of  27, she is, according to one Chinese sports official, "remarkable
for her harmonious movements, strength and swift throws."  Swift and  very
long  throws,  actually.  At the 1989 World Cup in Barcelona, her heave of
68'1/4" earned her a gold medal, the first ever by an Asian in a World Cup
track and field event, and she struck gold again with a throw of 68'4 1/4"
at last years world championships in Tokyo.  And though  she  has  a  good
chance to become the first Chinese track and field athlete to win an Olym-
pic gold medal, her coach, Kan Fulin, says, "Neither Huang  nor  I  places
much  importance in winning the gold. We believe victory in competition is
the reward for difficult training, much like a farmer reaps a good harvest
after a year's hard work in the field."

Huang  takes  an  equally  Maoist  approach  toward  her  accomplishments.
"Results  are  results," she says. "What I have done is no more newsworthy
than if I had swallowed 500 eels."

As a kid, Huang used to get teased about her weight. "What kind of athlete
are you?" classmates would ask.

"I'm a marathoner," she would say.

"How can that be?"

"I never win," she would crack. "I just run slowly."

"Huang is a woman completely at ease with herself.   "If  you  don't  care
about  being  fat, you'll feel happy," she says. "If you do care, you will
be unhappy. Me?  I don't care.  I have always been very big."

The elder of two children, Huang  grew  up  in  the  eastern  province  of
Zhejiang. Her parents worked in a textile factory.  At 13, she was spotted
by a prominent javelin coach and enrolled in a provincial  sports  school.
She  tried  javelin but "felt too clumsy."  She tried the discus but "felt
too dizzy."  Finally, she tried the shot put.  "I felt  just  right,"  she
says.   By  1985, at age 20, she was ranked No. 2 in the country.  In '86,
she won the title at the 10th Asian Games.

Early on, Huang realized something many athletes don't find out until they
hit  30  or  40  -  that there are all sorts of interesting things in life
apart from sports.  She design clothes, she reads historical  novels,  and
she  is  studying  English.   Instead  of displaying her trophies and gold
medals on the mantel, Huang chucks them under her  bed.   "They're  fake,"
she  says,  jokingly.   Huang  ought  to know.  After winning a medal, she
chomps on it, hoping thereby to determine - somehow  -  its  authenticity.
"Fake, fake, every one fake," she says, ruefully.

Huang is an emancipated woman.  "She doesn't like to be told  to  do  any-
thing,"  says  Kan.  "Ask  most  Chinese athletes to win a gold medal, and
they'll say, 'If you want me to, I will.'  Huang says, 'Don't pressure me.
I  already  intend to win.'"  Her attitude mirrors the spirit of the times
in her country.  "The slogan in today's China is, Don't discuss  what  be-
longs  to  capitalism  or socialism - just do it," Yang says. "We got that
from our leader, Deng Xiaoping."  Who may have gotten it from a Nike ad.

Huang practices doing it in the weight room of the Chinese Sports Training
Center.  "What do I like about the shot put?" she says, smiling. "I do not
like anything about it.  What is there to like about those heavy lumps  of
metal?   If  I  had  known the lumps would make me fat, I never would have
taken up the sport."

Huang's rapid release may be the most explosive in  women's  shot-putting.
"She's  got  the  most  rip,  the  most pop by far," says Art Venegas, the
throwing coach at UCLA. "The speed with which she rotates her  hips  gives
her  throws  incredible  thrust,  and the shot literally bursts out of her
hand.  She has the balance, agility and brute  force  of  a  great  middle
linebacker."

Despite it all, Huang placed a disappointing eighth in the Seoul Olympics.
But she rebounded quickly, winning the silver at the 1989 World Indoors in
Budapest.  What impressed Kan most was not  Huang's  performance  but  the
self-critique she wrote afterward.  He quotes it from memory: "Nerves were
the reason for my defeat at the Olympics.  Being too nervous.  I could not
control myself, and the result was that I relied on sheer force at the ex-
pense of technique.  To keep a cool head at all times is of  great  impor-
tance.   Only  in  this  way can one be in good form and give full play to
one's skills."

As Kan recites, Huang chugs around the track.  "She has slow feet," he ob-
serves, "but a very fast mouth."

He remembers once sitting  next  to  Huang  on  a  long  train  ride  from
Qinhuangdao  to Beijing.  "No matter how many times I asked, she would not
stop yakking," he says.

Finally, Kan said,  "Huang  Zhihong,  could  you  keep  quiet  just  three
minutes?"   When  she  shook her head, Kan grabbed her hand.  "If you open
your mouth in the next three minutes," he said, "I'll pinch your fingers."

Huang shut up.  "I held words as long as I  could,"  she  recalls.   Which
turned out to be a minute and 40 seconds.

"Maybe not a national record," says Kan. "But still, a personal best."

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Forwarded to SCC by Bo Xiong in Chicago