Bouncing toward Beijing on trampoline

Ye Shuai's first experience on a trampoline was at a training facility during his two years working with a local artistic gymnastics team in South China's coastal city of Xiamen.

He used the trampoline often despite his coach telling him he should try diving because his body was not strong enough for gymnastics.

In the end, Ye was told he didn't have the talent to succeed in artistic gymnastics or diving. But the trampoline was always there for him.

"I feel comfortable when I jump in the air and hold in there for a while," Ye told China Daily. "It feels like flying."

Ye began perfecting his trampoline skills ten years ago after his former gymnastics coach, Pan Qingyuan, asked him in 1998 to join a newly established trampoline team. Eager to forget his unpleasant experiences in gymnastics and diving, the 21-year-old jumped at the chance.

Fast-forward to November of this year and Ye has made history, becoming China's first-ever world trampoline champion after winning the men's individual event at the Quebec World Championships. He later consolidated his dominance in the sport with a title at the Good Luck Beijing International Invitational Tournament, a test event for next year's Beijing Olympic Games.

He credited his time in gymnastics and diving for preparing him for his trampoline career. But he confessed his knowledge of the sport extended no further than that training facility in Xiamen prior to joining the team in 1998.

"I did not have a clue about the sport, although I have played it many times (before joining the trampoline team)," he said.

Ye was not the only one in China new to the sport. Trampoline was only recently introduced into the Olympic Games as a discipline of gymnastics, making its Olympic debut in Sydney 2000, and China did not have its first trampoline team until 1997.

The first few years were tough, not only for athletes, but also for the coaches.

"In the first few years, it was like wading across the river by feeling the stones on the riverbed," Ye's coach, former artistic gymnastics coach Chen Qilin, said about the team's early years, echoing an old Chinese saying.

"The only thing we had was some videotapes."

However, one thing made life easier for the team - Ye's natural gravity-defying ability on the trampoline. He can jump high, the coach said. Really high.

"His height is the best in China and probably the best in the world," Chen said. "It gives him more time to execute his movements in the air."

While most trampoline athletes are happy jumping seven meters high and staying in the air for 20 seconds in a standard 10-jump routine, Ye can reach up to eight meters on a jump and hang in the air for about 22 seconds.

That makes him a pleasure to watch, but it also increases his risk of injury.

"The higher you are, the more accurate you need to be while positioning yourself on the trampoline and in the air," the coach said. "Any tiny mistake could be a disaster."

Disaster did strike for Ye - three times. He has broken his left arm three different times in the last 10 years, each a very painful experience that has almost made him quit.

"When I found my arm was broken for the first time, I cried. When it happened for the third time, my heart sank," he recalled.

"Besides, I had not done anything remarkable by that time and I was just disappointed and wanted to quit."

But after a phone call from his mom asking if he was willing to continue, he decided to stick with it. "I did not want to disappoint my mother," he said.

His perseverance finally paid off in 2004 when he won two national qualifying tournaments for the Athens Olympics. He ended up not going with the Olympic team because officials thought he was too young, so a senior teammate, Mu Yongfeng, was sent to Athens instead and failed to qualify for the finals.

It was at the Quebec Worlds that Ye established his superiority in the sport, as did the whole Chinese team.

Ye won the world title by 41.4 points, ahead of teammate Dong Dong. The Chinese team, composed of Ye, Dong and Lu Chunlong, also won the team title, while its female counterparts took two medals, including a gold in the team and a silver in the individual event, won by 2004 Athens Olympic bronze medalist Huang Shanshan.

China's achievement at the Quebec Worlds gave it four Olympic tickets, the maximum a nation is allotted.

Coach Chen said he was not surprised with the emergence of Ye because he believes Ye, whose routine is one of the most difficult in the world, is hard to beat now that he has matured.

"He had mastered such a difficult routine a couple of years before. He just could not bring it on in international competitions," Chen said.

"But he became mature this year and performed well in big occasions," he said. "Maybe he just grew up."

Ye has not entirely overcome his fragile nerves, though. During the Good Luck tournament he made a big mistake in the qualification round that almost cost him a place in the final.

It was a big lesson because he knew the consequences would be graver if anything similar happens at the Olympics next year.

"I am not afraid of any world-class players from other countries," he said. "When you step on the trampoline, there is no one standing on the opposite side. The only thing you need to do is to overcome the fear."

(China Daily 12/14/2007 page22)