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 The mystery of the Chinese Paralympic champion in the New York City Marathon took a while to unravel. 
 
 The champion, Zou Lihong, was supposed to re-enact a great showdown from the Rio Games, where she beat the favored American, Tatyana McFadden, by a hair in the wheelchair marathon. But when McFadden crossed the Central Park finish line as the champion on Sunday, she hadn’t seen Zou for miles. None of the competitors had. Questions to a race official yielded no clue as to what had happened. 
 
 So where did Zou end her first competition in the United States? 
 
 In Brooklyn, halted by a flat tire near Mile 13, upset and among strangers who had no idea who she was. But they wanted to help. 
 
 Three of them were especially eager — a software engineer, a marketing representative and a young New York City police officer who grew up on Long Island but had never seen the marathon in person until he took up his post on Sunday. 
 
 It became clear pretty quickly that they would not be able to get Zou back onto the course. Typically racers carry a spare tire, but Zou had only materials to patch, not replace. 
 
 Salvaging the day, emotionally if not competitively, would require other tools. To vault the language barrier, Zou would have to talk with her new companions through a translation app. She tapped Chinese characters onto one of their smartphones, and an unexpected conversation began. 
 
 “It really was a cool New York moment,” said Cecilia Daley, a marketing representative for Pfizer Pharmaceuticals who had volunteered to be one of the bicycling escorts acting as bodyguards of sorts for the wheelchair racers, protecting them from errant pedestrians and whatever else might stray into their path. “I wouldn’t imagine it happening anywhere else.” 
 
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 Officer Krystopher Valentin, 24 and a little more than a year into his job with the Police Department, had contacted the race’s emergency crew to help Zou return to Manhattan. Claudia Kulesh, a software engineer for Bloomberg L.P. and another escort cyclist, explained what Zou could expect by typing into the translation app: “They will have to take you separately from your chair.” 
 
 As the group waited for an athlete support van to collect Zou and her racing chair, the wind picked up. Zou shivered. Officer Valentin asked whether she needed anything. She said no at first, but he saw her lips trembling and asked again. Then he insisted. 
 
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 He gave her his jacket, bearing shield No. 6350, and it swallowed her petite frame. In the middle of a crosswalk, the officer leaned in for a picture, resting his right arm behind her chair. Zou smiled. 
 
 “She was the most humble, sweet person,” Valentin said. 
 
 They talked for about 25 minutes through the translation app before the emergency car arrived. “She ended up manning my post with me,” he said. 
 
 None of the three knew that two months earlier Zou had stunned the field, and herself, by beating McFadden at the Paralympics. “It was an accident,” Zou said Sunday. “She’s better than me.” 
 
 In an interview through Coco Zhang, an interpreter who works for China’s sports agency for the disabled, Zou explained what racing meant to her. 
 
 She is 32, five years older than McFadden. She contracted polio as a child and lost the use of a leg, but she did not begin competitive racing until 2009. 
 
 “Sport changed my life,” Zou said. “In China, having a disability is considered shameful, but sport shows it’s not.” 
 
 Winning gold in Rio has not changed her life, Zou said, but it has given her more confidence, even as she remains in awe of McFadden. “She’s my idol,” Zou said. “She’s a legend.” 
 
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 An invitation to the New York City Marathon soon followed Zou’s Rio win, and she became the first Chinese woman in the city’s wheelchair event. 
 
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 Had she expected to beat McFadden again? 
 
 “No,” she said. “My body wasn’t ready. I needed more training.” 
 
 None of the top contenders quite knew what to expect from Zou on Sunday since they had never faced her in a race with so many inclines. Rio was a flat, looped course. 
 
 The first mile, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, is the longest and steepest hill on the course, and Zou fell far behind at the start. Then came the flat tire. 
 
 The volunteer cyclists enter the race as the wheelchair competitors descend from the Verrazano-Narrows. The escorts are not allowed to cheer or coach, but they can jump into action like a pit crew to assist with a flat tire. Daley, who was assigned to shield Zou, realized her racer had fallen behind the pack and circled back to find her. Kulesh joined her in the effort. 
 
 Zou began the day with a flat, but ended it with a New York moment. Before saying goodbye, the group exchanged texts and shared the photo of Zou and Officer Valentin, making a big city feel a little smaller. 
 
 As Zou left Brooklyn in the van, her support group still did not know about the gold medal. Then someone looked up her name online. 
 
 “Only later did we find out and say, “Oh my gosh!’” Kulesh said. 
 
 On Sunday night, Zou returned to her hotel on Avenue of the Americas with an overstuffed shopping bag imprinted with an ad from the new movie “Trolls.” She had been to Macy’s and Victoria’s Secret. 
 
 On Monday she was to fly home to China with her new merchandise and fond memories of New York and its people, despite her abbreviated race. 
 
 “They were very kind to me,” Zou said, looking at that photo on her phone. “I hope to come back.” ||||| Flat tire halts Paralympian's NYC marathon attempt Updated: 2016-11-07 11:59 By Hezi Jiang in New York(China Daily USA) 
 
 Sometimes the hardest part is not to keep going, but seeing others pass by. 
 
 Sunday was Chinese wheelchair athlete Zou Lihong's first New York City Marathon, and her right rear tire went flat at the 13th-mile point, halfway through the 26.2-mile five-borough run. The tire couldn't be repaired. 
 
 Zou was invited to the event after winning the gold medal in the women's marathon at the Rio Paralympics in the summer, where she narrowly beat Tatyana McFadden, an American marathoner who had swept 17 straight victories in major marathons, including Sunday's. 
 
 "Rio was a surprise to all of us. It was only my fourth marathon," said Zou. "Most of my competitors are very experienced. I admire McFadden a lot." 
 
 McFadden won the women's wheelchair race on Sunday, completing a grand slam of the London, Boston, Chicago and New York marathons for the fourth straight year. Marcel Hug of Switzerland won for the second year in the men's wheelchair competition. 
 
 Mary Keitany of Kenya ran to her third consecutive victory for professional women, and in the men's race, Ghirmay Ghebreslassie, 20, of Eritrea, became the youngest winner in history. 
 
 Despite not being in the best physical condition after a break from the Paralympics, Zou decided to accept the invitation to the NYC Marathon because it gave her another chance to be among the world's best. 
 
 Her team supported and cheered for her through messages and calls. "It feels like they are all here with me," she said during an interview before the race. 
 
 When she realized she couldn't continue, she thought of her supporters. 
 
 "They tried so hard to make this trip happen for me. Getting the visa on a short notice alone was not easy. But I couldn't finish," she said. 
 
 While Zou waited for a bus to pick her up, a volunteer came to her, took off his coat and draped it over her shoulders. 
 
 Zou, 32, was born with polio that left her right leg paralyzed. She was managing a small grocery store in Dali, in Southwest China's Yunnan Province in 2009 when the father of a disabled cyclist saw her on the street and told her about the possibility of becoming an athlete. 
 
 She went to Shanghai for a tryout and was told she had talent. Zou started with the fencing team. Her left leg was normal, so sitting in a wheelchair for a long run painfully numbs her leg, but she loves racing. 
 
 Zou maintained her smile and said she likes New York City. She will try to come back another time - to finish a marathon and to see the Statue of Liberty. 
 
 hezijiang@chinadailyusa.com
– In a New York minute, a Paralympic athlete's distressing experience turned into an inspiring one thanks to a smartphone app and the kindness of strangers. The New York Times reports on the plight of Zou Lihong, a Chinese wheelchair racer who beat US favorite Tatyana McFadden to win gold at Rio's Paralympics over the summer. Zou was competing in the New York City Marathon's wheelchair division on Sunday when she got a flat around the Mile 13 mark in Brooklyn. Without a spare tire to get her back on the course, Zou was effectively out of the race—and stuck in a strange place, unable to speak English—but marketing rep Cecilia Daley, NYPD cop Krystopher Valentin, and software engineer Claudia Kulesh jumped in to help with some old-fashioned Big Apple graciousness. Valentin draped his police jacket around Zou's shivering shoulders as they waited for an athlete support van to come get her, while he, Kulesh, and Daley (both bicycle escorts for the wheelchair racers) communicated with Zou via a Chinese-English translation app on one of their smartphones. "It really was a cool New York moment," Daley says, with Valentin calling the 32-year-old Zou "the most humble, sweet person." In fact, only later, after Zou had left with her ride, did the trio research her online and find out she was actually a Rio gold medalist. Zou—who China Daily says lost the use of her right leg as a child due to polio and didn't start racing competitively until 2009—says she wants to eventually return to New York City, noting she hopes to pay a visit to the Statue of Liberty and finish the 26.2 miles that she started. (Technology for Paralympic athletes is so good it has some people worried.)