Ningbo Girl Yang Qian is Going All Out to Prepare for the Olympics
By Dong Na
Recently, Yang Qian, a Ningbo-born sport shooter, is doing her best to get ready for the Olympics.
"Yang Qian has been in her zone lately, scoring a high number of rings in several mock finals, and setting a personal best in the mixed team event," said Yu Lihua, Yang Qian's first coach.
Yang Qian is the second shooter from Ningbo to qualify for the Olympic Games. She has shown super high skills, hitting the world record once, since joining the junior team selection for the Tokyo Olympics last year.
Shooting requires strong psychological quality, said Du Li, head coach of the rifle team and an Olympic champion. "Everything remains unknown before the competition, even you are fully prepared in trainings." In recent days, Yang Qian has been keeping up to her regular schedule, showing up in the apartment, dining hall, and training center as usual. Her priority is to maintain a steady state of mind, focus on training, and avoid external disturbance that will cause too much pressure.
Yang Qian was born in 2000 in Jiangshan, Yinzhou. In 2011, she passed the selection and joined the shooting team of Ningbo Sports School from Maoshan Primary School. In the 2014 Games of Zhejiang Province, Yang Qian won three gold medals in a row, scoring 399 points in the 40-shot women's air rifle, a world-class performance.
Yang Qian did not stop there. In 2015, she won the third place in the First National Youth Games. By the end of the year, she was selected to the National Youth Olympic Team and won the title of National Sports Master. At the beginning of 2016, she was specially recruited to the shooting team of Tsinghua University.
Yang Qian knocked on the door of the national team with her performance at the Second National Youth Games in 2019: she scored 633 points. Only three players on the national team had ever managed to do so at that time! After that, Yang Qian was enrolled in the national team and started to earn her grounds step by step.