2012 Olympic Profile: ‘Pretty Baby’ Yang Shu-chun in TaeKwonDo

Taiwan’s Yang Shu-chun has high hopes for the London Olympics, which will be her last major tournament. The 27-year-old taewkwondo player is wrapping up her athletic career of nearly 20 years and plans to become a coach.

Yang, often nicknamed “pretty baby” in local media, made headlines during the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou, China, where she was disqualified for wearing extra electronic sensors in her socks. She staged a sit-down protest and refused to leave the mat, leading the South Korea-based World Taekwondo Federation to ban her from international competition for three months.

She has moved on and is now focused on London. “I’m really looking forward to demonstrating my strengths at the Olympics…I will more actively enhance my skills and tactics in less than two months’ time,” Yang told The Wall Street Journal.

Yang’s year-to-date results also suggest she is on a promising road to winning gold this summer, after securing three golds: at a London Prepares series Test Event, Dutch Open Taekwondo Championships, and Asian Championships, and one silver medal at Spanish Open. She finished in fifth place in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Chinese Taipei taekwondo coach Sung Ching-hung, who knew Yang when she was 10 years old, said: “She wants to draw a perfect ending, and I believe in her as she is a great athlete who can always exercise high sensitivity at games.”

Quotable:

“I don’t care about what I cannot control, while I will never give up what I can control. I will participate in the game with joy, do my all best and enjoy the game!” — Yang

via 2012 Olympic Profile: ‘Pretty Baby’ Yang Shu-chun – China Real Time Report – WSJ.