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Wushu warrior

(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-08-08 10:29

Wushu will only be a sideshow at the Beijing Games, but it may help reap China's first Olympic boxing gold medal thanks to national team captain Zou Shiming's early grounding in it.

The Guizhou trailblazer is hot favorite in the 48kg division after winning bronze in Athens four years ago and two world championships in 2005 and 2007, all of them firsts for China.

With vocal home crowd support, the 27-year-old with the elusiveness of a martial artist will be next to impossible to outpoint at Beijing Workers Gymnasium, where he's tipped to become a harbinger for Middle Kingdom pugilism in two weeks' time.

The lightning speed and flexible footwork first honed by wushu training make Zou harder to hit than a thirsty mosquito.

The native of Zunyi, in southwest China's Guizhou province, was a timid child who, after being mollycoddled by his mother, was even picked on by a schoolgirl who left a permanent scar on his face.

This humiliation and his idolization of Zhang Sanfeng, a Taoist mystic of the 14th century who is considered the father of tai chi, led him to wushu at the age of 13.

But after learning its strategic choreography, he was quickly drawn to the more brutal art of boxing, where only genuine warriors pass muster.

Much to the surprise of his early doubters, the light flyweight achieved an Olympic breakthrough for Chinese boxing when he won its first Olympic medal at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games.

"This time I'll bring home a gold medal from the Olympics, which belongs to China," he promised recently.

"And I'll fight for it."

Two years after first representing his province's boxing team in 1997, Zou was selected in the national team following victory at the national youth championships.

But he impressed few of his teammates and coaches, who saw little more than a skinny kid who lacked punching power and wilted against opponents who didn't.

But coach Zhang Chuanliang saw merits in the little guy who could move and punch with dazzling speed and who broke into sports facilities to train during sacred holidays.

Together master and student forged the closest of bonds and gradually melded Zou's Wushu skills into a stick-and-move hybrid that has earned him some colorful nicknames, such as "the Knight of Lightning", the "Fox" and the "Pirate".

"It's kinda simple to say," Zou says with a smile. "It's just that I move fast to avoid the heavy punches from my opponent, keep moving during the fight, and seek the moments to punch fast and heavy."

Although Chairman Mao Zedong banned boxing, he used similar guerilla tactics to found the People's Republic. So, little coincidence Zou wore a brass pin bearing Mao's image at last year's Amateur World Championships.

"Zou rarely knocks opponents out," The Guardian newspaper wrote after that win in Chicago. "He batters them and darts out of reach, like an angry sparrow."

(China Daily 08/08/2008 page14)