People
World champ hits the mark
Out of curiosity, Miss Yu gave a try to the "mysterious and challenging" sport that she had no idea of. "When I tried it for the first time, I was fascinated," she said.
The "cool" fencing suit and the
discovery of her talent in the sport have
driven her to keep practising throughout
the years, she said. She has also been
captured by the challenges.
"Within one or two seconds, I need to observe the opponent's strengths and weaknesses, and use the best strategy to attack the torso of her body to score," she said. The world champion earned her gains in the sport through pain, as her hand's muscles ached so much at the beginning of her training that she needed to receive physiotherapy.
After just nine months of training,
Miss Yu got her first chance to represent
Hong Kong and won two first runnerups
in the Wheelchair Fencing World Cup
in Italy in 2001.
Her remarkable feats continued. She
won a gold and a silver in the next world
cup in Hungary in 2002, when she was
also named scholarship athlete by the
Hong Kong Sports Institute.
And the Athens 2004 Paralympics Games brought the most memorable moments for Miss Yu, who scooped four gold medals in the event.
In 2005, she made history by becoming the first person in the world to be awarded the best games debut of the Paralympic Sports Awards for her excellent achievement in the Paralympics Games.Last year, she took two golds and a silver in the world cup.
But Miss Yu's unbeaten record since 2002 was broken during last year's IWAS World Fencing Championships at Torino, Italy, in which she only got a bronze medal.
She said the failure was because of
some misjudgment in that game. "My
coach and I felt so frustrated," she said. "But I needed to control my emotion that
night since I still had other individual and
team competitions the next day."
She said the experience was important in helping her discover her weaknesses, as continuous victory might lead to arrogance and indifference to competitions.
