THE 16-YEAR-OLD confidently walked to the edge of the diving platform (跳台) and turned around. Seconds later, she jumped from the water after a flawless (没有瑕疵的) 407C—the dive she is good at. Because of her excellent performance, all seven judges awarded her a perfect score of 10 points. China's Olympic champion Quan Hongchan won the women's 10m platform gold medal at the Hangzhou Asian Games.
Nine years ago, the young girl was playing hopscotch (跳房子) with her classmates on the playground when a coach, Chen Huaming, noticed her. He found her talent on jump and thought that she could jump higher and further. His judgment turned out to be correct. Before the Hangzhou Asian Games, Quan was already an Olympic champion.
In some ways, Quan is like any normal teenager. She loves snacks, amusement parks and grabbing dolls from claw machines (抓娃娃机) like most girls her age. Her favorite doll is a blue one-the color of a swimming pool—her elder brother gave her as a gift. She keeps it on her bed, a quiet friend that is always there to relieve her stress.
Unlike her peers (同龄人), the young diver needs to train extremely hard and has to improve her family's living conditions. Her family live in Maihe Village of Zhanjiang, and her parents have five children to feed with the little money from an orchard (果园). To make matters worse, her mother was disabled in a traffic accident in 2017.
As a result, Quan has grown up to be brave and hardworking. She couldn't even swim before she went to the sports school, but she was the first among all the new students to step onto the 3m springboard and the 10m platform. When asked if she was scared at the time, she answered, "I didn't think about it that much. I just closed my eyes and jumped." Soon, she fell in love with diving. Quan shot to fame after winning the gold medal in the women's 10m platform at the Tokyo Olympic Games.
