Yang Wei (gymnast)

Yang Wei (Turner) medal table
Yang Wei at the 2008 Olympics
Apparatus gymnastics
People's Republic of China
Olympic games
gold	2000 Sydney	Team all-around
silver	2000 Sydney	All-around
gold	2008 Beijing	Team all-around
gold	2008 Beijing	Individual all-around
silver	2008 Beijing	Rings
World championships
gold	1999 Tianjin	Team all-around
bronze	1999 Tianjin	Horizontal bar
bronze	2002 Debrecen	Leap
gold	2003 Anaheim	Team all-around
silver	2003 Anaheim	All-around
gold	2006 Aarhus	Ingots
gold	2006 Aarhus	All-around
gold	2006 Aarhus	Team all-around
gold	2007 Stuttgart	All-around
gold	2007 Stuttgart	Team all-around

Yang Wei ( Chinese  杨 威 , Pinyin Yáng Wēi ; born February 8, 1980 in Xiantao ) is a Chinese gymnast and member of the Chinese national team. He won a total of four medals, including three gold , at three Olympic Games .

Life

Yang Wei, born in Hubei Province in 1980 , was discovered at the age of five by talent scouts from Xiantao Gymnastics School. Since he was from Xiantao, he continued to live with his family and did not live in gymnastics school like other children. In 1990 he switched to the gymnastics school in Wuhan . At the age of 13 he won his first titles in school competitions. In 1996 he was part of the Chinese national team for the first time. At the age of 18 he entered the Asian Games for China and was able to win his first medals on the international stage. Further medals followed at the 1999 World Championships in Tianjin.

At the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Yang Wei won the silver medal in the all-around competition and the gold medal with the national team. In 2003 at the World Gymnastics Championships in Anaheim he was able to win the gold medal again with the national team and a silver medal in the all- around competition.

At the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Yang Wei started both with the team and in the individual all-around as a favorite. The team, however, only finished fifth. In the individual all-around final, Yang fell on the horizontal bar and was only seventh. Then he wanted to end his career first. However, his coach Huang Yubin was able to convince him to train for another four years in order to compete in the Olympic Games in Beijing .

Further gold medals followed at the 2006 World Championships in Aarhus ( Denmark ) with the national team and on parallel bars . At the 2007 World Championships in Stuttgart , he won the gold medal with the team and in the individual all-around.

At the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008, Yang was able to win the team competition again with the Chinese team. In addition, he was Olympic champion in the individual all-around and also wins silver on the rings.

Yang's partner is Yang Yun , who won the bronze medal on the uneven bars at the 2000 Summer Olympics . Yang's coach gave him permission to marry his partner after the 2008 Olympics. The couple married in November 2008, not without criticism from many Chinese people of the expensive ceremony. Yang Wei and Yang Yun again sparked controversy in China in the summer of 2009 when they asked for suggestions for names for their unborn son on their website. This caused displeasure, because in China it is actually not allowed to have the sex of the child determined before the birth.

Yang announced his retirement from professional sports in May 2009.

Web links

Commons : Yang Wei  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Chinese Olympic Committee profile

Footnotes

1. ↑ ^{a b} Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung : Yang Wei: On lonely heights . July 14, 2008
2. ^ ^{A b} Reuters : Coach gives Yang permission to get married . August 14, 2008
3. ↑ ^{a b} SinaEnglish: Triple Olympic champion gymnast Yang retires . Retrieved October 25, 2009
4. ↑ International Gymnast Magazine Online: Yang Wei Defends 'Lavish' Wedding to Yang Yun . Retrieved October 25, 2009
5. ↑ SinaEnglish: Chinese gymnastics star lambasted . Retrieved October 25, 2009