She could not even swim. "when i first saw the boat, i was terrified," recalls yang, who was 14 when she was recruited in 1997. "coming from a village, i was scared by any deep water - and now i had to go out paddling in a boat." Yet in an illustration of the power of China's state-directed sports system, Yang became a world-class kayaker.
On a hot summer afternoon in Germany's Ruhr valley 10 years later, I saw her help power a four-woman kayak across 500m of the Duisburg regatta course in less than one minute and 39 seconds, fast enough to win China a coveted right to compete in the event at next month's Olympic Games.
