Sports/Olympics / Feature and Column
Olympics-From fertiliser to national hero in a shot
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-08-09 10:48
BEIJING, Aug 8 - With 60 shots heard around the sporting world, former
fertiliser salesman Xu Haifeng took his place in Olympic history and
became a Chinese national hero.
Xu's victory in the 50 metre free pistol shooting final at the 1984 Los
Angeles Games earned the world's most populous nation its first Olympic
gold medal.
By claiming the first gold of the Games, Xu ensured China made an
immediate impact on its return to the Summer Olympics after the 32-year
absence caused by the controversy over the recognition of Taiwan.
Yet just over two years before his triumph, Xu was selling fertilizer in
one of China's poorer provinces, had just a week's shooting experience
and had not picked up a gun in a decade.
"I started shooting very late," Xu told Reuters. "I graduated from high
school in 1974 and was sent to the country (to farm) for four and a half
years. In 1979 I was employed as a salesman by a country shop in Anhui.
"I sold many things -- cigarettes, sugar, wine, nails ... and finally
chemical fertilizer."
Xu thinks he may have inherited his sometime soldier father's love of
guns and, like most Chinese boys, had messed around with catapults
growing up in southeast Fujian Province.
"In June 1982, I heard my former high school teacher was coaching the
municipal shooting team and as I was very fond of shooting, I asked him
to let me have a go," added Xu, who will be 49 on Thursday.
"We had had one week of military training before we graduated from high
school. It was the first time I had used a real gun and I finished number
one in the school."
PROVINCIAL CHAMPION
Within two months of taking up the sport, Xu was a provincial champion
and in March 1983 he won his first national title, an achievement that
won him a place in the national shooting team and in November 1983 the
Olympic trials.
"There were six of us and I was very much the rookie," Xu recalled. "So I
never thought I'd make it to the Olympics. But unexpectedly I got through
all the trials and was chosen."
Despite going along "just to take part", after more than two hours of his
event in Los Angeles, it came down to four competitors.
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