Yang Yu, a journal she wrote for her Olympics

Introduction: Yang Yu, born in 1985. She was a triple Olympian (2000, 2004, 2008) winning silver medals in women's 4x200m free relay in 2004 and 2008. In world championships, she was silver medalist in 2001 and 2003 and bronze medalist in 2005 in women's 200m free. She was also part of winning team in 4x100m medley relay in 2003 World Championships. She won short course 200m free world champions twice in 2000 and 2006. She planned to retire after this year.

PB (long course):
50m free: 25.29s (2009)
100m free: 54.94 (2001)
200m free: 1:56.79 (2008)

Below is a translated version of the journal she wrote about her feelings for Olympics:

Beijing, a city that is familiarized by world civilians in 2008
Olympics, a sports gala held in Beijing that is known by people all over the world.
2008, the hardest year it has been for Chinese.
Now, it is about to become a piece of history.
When everyone is sighing about why time flies, I can’t help to start feeling down.
A lot happened this year. Everything happened all the sudden without a sign.
Starting from the snow storm at the beginning of the year followed by independence issue in Tibet and then the earthquake, together with explosion incidence during torch relay and incidence of someone (I guess she referred to Ouyang Kunpeng’s doping case), it seems all these “deliberately” put up their final showdowns before Olympics.
Finally, here came the Olympic opening ceremony and it seemed everything was fated to change after 8pm on August 08, 2008 which to me is utterly mind-boggling. The opening ceremony amazed everyone and each program was so jaw-dropping that make people all over the world marvelled at the wonder created by Chinese. Up to this point, who knew it was just a beginning? And who could figure out Chinese could outdo Americans by so much in the number of gold medals which exceeded 50 this time?

From my point of view, there have been so many unbelievable surprises created in the swimming event alone. From Yafei’s Asian record (Zhou Yafei in women’s 100m fly) on day 1 to Zhouzhou’s silver medal (Zhang Lin in men’s 400m free) on day 2, Ah Pang’s bronze medal with world record (Pang Jiaying in women’s 200m free) on day 5 until August 14, a climax for Chinese swimming in the meet when Liu Zige in women’s 200m fly walked away with gold medal plus world record, these all happened all the sudden like a dream but they were all real.
To me, the whole meet seemed to be so hard to comprehend. It was like a trip to me in this edition of Olympics since I only had one relay to swim (women’s 4x200m free). The relay was given up by all and we all thought making to the final was good enough (comment: Although Chinese women’s 4x200m free team has been multi medallists in all major competitions since 2001 and before 2007 world championships, they did not make it to the final in 2007 Worlds because swimmers all over the world have been stepping up a big time in this era and the improvement in Chinese swimming seemed to be a little sluggish a few years back). Of course, it was what exactly I have been thinking... But after the heat, it was like a joke from god has been made on me that I swam a personal best by surprise. “What’s going on?”, I asked myself after the heat. Anyway, the competition went on and I did not have the time to think this through. Since it has been this way (making to the final), I just had to do better in the final. We leapt one big step further in the final by chopping off the world record by 5 seconds which I never thought of, really, really. Although we lost to Australia, we reigned the silver medal once more (after 2004 Athens Olympics) and broke the old world record by 5 seconds. I am satisfied, really. After the swim, all the friends were sending their congratulations and we are all like becoming one who feels the same fullness of the outcome, really. I feel so lucky and so happy that so many people have been concerning so much about me.

After that, I was in the stand cheering for the team and one day, I suddenly sensed that in near future, I won’t be standing on the poolside like this cheering for my team mates and friends… In fact, I have known it for a long time. But if I retire one day, it will be so missed since I love swimming so much. I used to thinking of giving up (swimming) whenever I was in pain (caused by training or poor results), but water which is the thing I was in love since I was a kid… I never thought of this emotion surfacing so soon. I am looking at the watercube and thinking about my friends, I feel bumped when I know everyone will walk their own lives after retirement… I may be thinking too much. I am so grateful of Beijing and I am so grateful of this Olympics. Not only had it offered me a silver medal and financial incentives, but also more satisfaction and happiness come from within. Finally, I would like to say “I am so lucky to meet you all, really.”

Good luck to you, Yang Yu. One of the swimmers to witness the fall of Chinese swimming (1999-2000) to its sprouting (2001-2004), to its small setback (2007) and to its rise again (2008-2009).