Yang Qian, 22, won the first gold of the Tokyo Olympics. She looked very quiet in the women's 10-meter air rifle (气步枪) final and won the prize.
The young student from Ningbo, Zhejiang Province is studying at Tsinghua University. She became popular quickly.
The encouraging performance made Yang become a popular star. Her personal Weibo account has attracted rapidly hundreds of thousands of new followers so far.
Yang helped Tsinghua win more praise for its sports program, which joins higher education and sports training together to develop student players in the likes of shooting, basketball and so on, outside the country's traditional state-run sports system.
Tsinghua's first shooting team was set up in the 1950s. After a long break, shooting was restarted in 1999. They find student players from high schools, ordinary schools and sports colleges. The program has always trained sharpshooters for the national team, including Yi Siling, who won China's opening gold of the 2012 London Olympics, also in the women's 10-meter air rifle.
Yang Qian's action made people show more interest in the games. The Tokyo Olympics were put off from 2020 because of COVID-19. Yang wore a face mask, but her smiling eyes on the podium (领奖台) and the shape of a heart made with her arms have touched people around the world.
"We trained how to do well under pressure," Yang told reporters. "The game was really tight today, but I was so relaxed that I could win," She said.
Gao Jing, a coach at Tsinghua, said, "Yang is brave and clever and she isn't afraid of pressure. She has innate talent for shooting and she keeps training hard."
"She keeps up with the strict study in Tsinghua. She trains hard and always competes in my team. She is strong inside, so she could win the prize," said Gao.