Hats off to Jujie

Yesterday as I was hanging out with my buddy Martin before he disappeared to Amsterdam to finish his M.Sc. we happened across a TV screen showing the Olympics, and lo and behold, I saw one of my old coaches Jujie Luan fencing in Women's Foil. Amazing considering the fact that she's 50 years old with three kids. As a matter of fact, Jujie is kind of a legend in China. The first time that the PRC were part of the Olympics in 1984 in L.A. Jujie was one of the first Chinese athletes to ever win a gold medal for China. She later retired and moved to Edmonton where she was good friends with my Vancouver fencing coach Roy Suzuki, and we would often go to her house to visit her whenever she ran fencing workshops. She even took us to the bank where she pulled her gold medal out of the safety deposit box to show us. Man, those things are heavy, it practically broke my neck.

As I'm pretty good with kids I remember playing with her two daughters and son a lot back when they were kids since Paul, Mike and Jeremy were pretty much content hanging out in her basement listening to music and chatting. I remember her six year old Jerrica was really outgoing had a crush on me which was kind of cute and her other daughter Jessica had Down's syndrome. Her son was kind of quiet, but I won him over by giving him most of my Halloween candy which made him open up to me a bit.

Anyway, Jujie won the first bout she was fighting pretty easy which made me really happy, but then we had to leave so I didn't know what happened next. Turns out she lost her next bout to Aida Mohamed the 7th ranked fencer in the world who's nearly half her age. Moreover, she practically showed all of Mohamed's technical weaknesses to the other competitors so I'm guessing future fencers will play a much more aggressive game against her as Jujie lost playing a bit too much defense.

Moreover in China Jujie is like freaking Paris Hilton, hounded by the press everywhere she goes. Indeed, I read that they study her in school as a Chinese hero, they made a movie about her life, and the last time I was in China I saw a statue of her in Beijing. Yao Ming might be big (literally) but this woman is legend and the fact that she lost at the 2008 Olympics does not dampen her aura. Rather, a 50 year old mother of three coming out of retirement to fight one more time in her home country simply adds a finishing touch to an already grand storyline.