Living Legends

Whether as a player     1    as a coach, Lang Ping brought glory and won medals for China,     2    (make) her honoured by fans.     3    (face) with challenges, she never lost heart. Even though she lost two of her most important     4    (player), she led her team     5    world championship and then to Olympic gold of 2016. Air Jordan’s skills were     6    (impress), but     7    mental strength that he showed made him unique. The secret to his success is learning from failures.     8    was losing games that taught him to practise     9    (hard) and never to give up. The Boys and Girls Club which he started in Chicago     10    (help) young people since 1996.

Before the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, visually-impaired (视力受损的)Chinese runner Liu Cuiqing put a lot of stress on     1    (she) to do well. Finally, she made it. She won two gold medals with the help of her sighted guide Xu Donglin and brought honor and glory for China.

In 2010, she joined the national athletics team    2     was made up of disabled people. She has had to experience countless challenges. “As a blind person, I learn things     3    (slowly) than other people do,” she said. Sports competitions for disabled     4    (athlete) require blind runners to be assisted by a guide. Liu met Xu in 2013 and since then, the two     5    (train) hard together, linked by a thin rope. “To other people, this may just be     6    ordinary rope, but to us, it is the eye, the direction and trust. We depend     7     the rope to feel the turns and the distance between us. Only when she trusts me     8    (complete) is she able to run boldly(大胆地),” Xu told CCTV.

At the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Paralympic Games, after    9    (cross) the finish line, Xu fell heavily because of a pain in his right knee. “In fact, when I was running, my leg was already so    10    (pain) that I could not feel anything. I only had one thought, which was to accompany her (Liu) to the end,” he told CCTV after the race.

After winning the championship in boys’ singles under 14 years old at the ASICS Tennis Junior Tour in Guangzhou in late August, 2022, Wang Fa has     1    (rapid) attracted attention on the Internet. He is known for carrying his tennis rackets in a bamboo basket,     2    (earn) him the name of “basket tennis boy”.

Wang Fa is a member of the Va ethnic group (佤族) in Cangyuan Va autonomous county, Yunnan province,    3     was just lifted out of poverty in 2019. Over the past six years, he, along with his     4    (fellow) at the Yunnan Wild Elephants Tennis Club,     5     ( improve) his skills and physical strength through training that includes running 9 kilometers and swinging his racket more than 7,000 times every day. “If it     6    (be) not for tennis, I would still be helping out my family with farm work back home,” he told China Daily.

Talking about his habit of carrying his tennis equipment in a bamboo basket—a symbol of the agricultural life of the Va ethnic group-Wang Fa said after the match that he carried his rackets this way     7    (honor) his hometown.

Before tennis, Wang Fa was just an ordinary boy from a village. But in 2016, he was chosen by a local club to learn to play tennis. At first, his parents didn’t agree at all because they could not afford it,     8     the tennis club offered to teach him free of charge. Zhang Xiaohong, Wang Fa’s head coach, founded the club in 2014, selecting around 20 talented local children and training them     9     free. “I want to take children to the outside world through tennis,” Zhang said. For Wang Fa, winning the ASICS Tennis Junior Tour title is just the beginning of a promising future. “I will head to the top spot on the     10    (profession) stage,” he said.

Nikhil Kumar is one of the best young table tennis     1    (player)in the United States. Less than a month after Kumar won the right     2    (compete)in them,the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games     3    (put)off until 2021. Like so many other Olympic athletes, he is now trying to stay sharp and in shape.

    4    is different are all the details of his training. All things considered, he says, everything seems to be working. “For my sport, a little lucky that we’re able to have everything indoors, and it’s not taking up too much space and everything,” Kumar said. “Not many sports are as lucky as ours are right now, to be able to have the opportunity to continue playing     5    a daily basis.”

The coronavirus pandemic(新冠病毒)has forced many athletes to be     6    (create)as they try to continue their training. But in some Olympic sports, working from home is fairly common. Kumar has been able to play table tennis with a robot     7    shoots balls at him.

Many competitors are facing tough issues during the pandemic.     8    , some have been lucky. Weightlifter Kate Nye trains at home in her garage. She said, “Everything kind of started shutting down, which     9    (affect)our lives in other ways—but weightlifting wasn’t one of them. I’ve just been going as    10    (plan).”

9 . They are the world’s fittest people. But even Olympic athletes have had their share of difficult, heart-breaking or embarrassing moments.

1904 Olympics, St Louis, USA

American Fred Lorz crossed the finish line of the Olympic marathon with a time of 3 hours and 13 minutes. He had beaten the second runner by 15 minutes. Lorz looked happy and fresh, and smiled for the photographers. Just before they gave him the gold medal, the race officials arrived and took away the medal, and Lorz was banned from races for a year. Then an official told the truth. He had travelled by car for 11 miles of the marathon!

1908 Olympics, London, England

The Italian Dorando Pietri was one of the unluckiest marathon runners. When he arrived in the stadium, he was very tired. The people were cheering, but Pietri couldn’t continue. He fell down and got up again four times. Finally, around seven metres from the finish line, he fell down again and didn’t move. Worried officials ran over and picked him up. He crossed the finish line and won the gold medal. But a few hours later the Olympic officials had to take it away from him again. They said he couldn’t be the winner because Olympic officials had helped him cross the line.

2000 Olympics, Sydney, Australia

Eric Moussambani of Equatorial Guinea became one of the most loved athletes of the 2000 games. His race was the 100-metre freestyle swim. He jumped into the pool and started swimming. After the first 50 metres he was very tired. He went more and more slowly and almost stopped in the middle of the pool. The officials worried that he was drowning. But Moussambani continued and finished the race with a time of 1 minute and 52 seconds, the slowest in the history of the Olympics. Still, Moussambani was happy. He had never swum in a pool of that size before.

10 . The birthday girl Guo Yujie got the perfect present on Saturday — a Paralympic gold medal. The teenager sped to_______in the women’s sprint standing (短距离站姿) event to obtain the first-ever winter Paralympic gold medal for a Chinese woman on _______. She hopes her achievement shows young people with disabilities that they should never lose_________themselves.

Born in Zhangjiakou, Guo was _______disabled, having something wrong with her left hand. She first tried_______when she was 11.“I am_______when I am skiing,” Guo says excitedly.

She was then_______to become a para cross-country skier and biathlete (滑雪射击运动员). Her decision was also_______by her family. In biathlete, Guo_______her lack of strength in skiing with precision (精确) and speed in the shooting section.

“I just love the quick change between high-speed racing and controlling my breathing for ________. I hope more disabled people can find their________in snow sports. Actually, disabled people are not________at anything. We can take part in the Winter Paralympics and become ________.Disabled people shouldn’t think little of themselves,” Guo says.

With three events to go for Guo, she hopes she has just ________her journey to victory. “People may think it is natural to put in less effort since you have won the gold medal, but when the racing moment really comes you still want to________,” she says.