Rural teacher cultivates world-class athletes

Tang Wenhan may be a regular physical education teacher working at a secondary school in Shaoyang, Hunan province, but his students are far from ordinary. Many are pocketing gold medals in world-class athletic competitions, one after another. They all come from a mountain village, and many are disabled.

Tang, 61, had a dream of becoming a sports champion when he was little. Born in a poor family with little access to proper training, he began to transfer share that passion with his students when he began working as a teacher in 1984.

After doing some research on the province's key sports events, Tang found out his students had strong arms from doing farm work, and might have advantages in sports like wrestling or judo.

He Hongmei was one of the successful talents Tang cultivated. Discovered by Tang when she turned 10, He trained every day after school. About six months later, she received an offer from a local professional sports school.

He's parents, however, objected to the idea of their daughter pursuing sports. Tang then contacted the school to apply for a tuition discount and made several trips to He's home before her parents finally agreed.

He later joined the national judo team and became a world-class judoka, winning four World Cups and collecting a total of nine medals since 2007.

Apart from regular physical education at school, Tang also began to recruit disabled students since 1992, training them for free. He endeavored to find the most suitable sports category for them based on their age, disability level and other physical features.

For over 33 years, Tang has trained 280 disabled students. They have run past rivers, fish ponds and rice fields and Tang has made sandbags, spingboards and barbells on his own from scratch, as the school lacked proper track field and training equipment.

One of the students, Jia Youhua, has been paralyzed from the waist down since the age of 1, and can only walk on crutches. Tang offered to come to her place to train her in weightlifting. To reach her home, Tang had to walk a rugged, cramped 3 kilometer path, doing so for over 10 years without a single absence — even when he fell from a mountain slope and sprained his left foot.

In order to adapt equipment to Jia's condition, Tang planned and built a professional weightlifting bar with a carpenter. With Tang's support, Jia shone at the seventh Far East and South Pacific Games for the Disabled, taking a gold medal.

Tang's dedication to sports teaching helped his students step out of their small mountain village and make their mark in provincial and national teams in weightlifting, badminton and judo, earning seven world-level gold medals, along with one continent-level and 17 national-level first place awards.

"I've always held a dream in my heart: To one day see one of my students standing on the Olympic podium," Tang told CCTV.