Rising stars emerge from National Games
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E-mail China Daily, September 29, 2021
Turning professional for only the second year, Renqingdongzhibu took gold in the men's marathon at the National Games with a time of 2:14:26, five seconds ahead of Peng Jianhua, who was the national champion in 5,000m and 10,000m.
Renqingdongzhibu came from West China's Qinghai province. Born in 2000, he used to be a cowherd, running on the prairie with his cows and sheep.
When he turned 16, he entered a sports school and started getting involved in running. He made it to the provincial team in 2018 and started to train as a professional athlete.
In 2020, Renqingdongzhibu started to compete in marathon and finished sixth in Xuzhou Marathon in April 2021, in which Peng Jianhua was the champion.
Only five months after the defeat, the 20-year-old came back stronger at the National Games and beat the champion who used to be way ahead.
17-year-old gymnast Wei Xiaoyuan, an alternate in China's Olympic roster, rallied to take the women's all-around title at China's 14th National Games on Sept 24.
Wei, of Guangxi, won the title with 55.064 points, edging national teammate Ou Yushan of Guangdong by 0.099 points. Luo Rui, another alternate at Tokyo 2020, settled for bronze with 54.866 points.
Wei produced an excellent performance on the uneven bars to lead the competition after rotation three. Her score of 13.266 in the floor exercise held off a strong challenge from Ou, as the latter scored 13.500 points which was not enough for gold.
"Though I was a little nervous on the uneven bars and floor exercise, I managed to finish the competition without big mistakes," Wei said. "The gold medal boosted my self-confidence since I have little experience of big events."
Although Zhang Boheng failed to win the men's gymnastics individual all-around gold medal at China's 14th National Games, he ranked first in the qualification.
During the final on Sept 23, the 21-year-old put a lot of pressure on Beijing's Xiao Ruoteng, the runner-up in the event at the Tokyo Olympic Games, and ultimately placed second in the event by a slight disadvantage of just 0.067 points.
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