Student Yang makes the grade

Prestigious Tsinghua University adds another Olympic champion to its growing list of gold-medal winners

Tsinghua University's production line of shooting champions hit the target once again after junior student Yang Qian won the first gold of the Tokyo Olympics on July 24.

Yang, 21, belied her young age to hold her nerve in July 24's women's 10-meter air rifle final and claim the title with a total of 251.8 points in her Olympic debut.

The morale-boosting performance made Yang a darling of social media back home, with her personal Weibo account attracting roughly 650,000 new followers over the course of a few hours since her win.

China's Yang Qian and Yang Haoran won the 10-meter air rifle mixed team gold at the Tokyo Olympics on July 27. After individual medals, China's Yangs win mixed team gold.

The triumph earned yet more kudos for Tsinghua's collegiate sports program, which combines higher education and athletic training to develop student athletes in the likes of track and field, shooting, and basketball, outside the country's traditional State-run sports system.

"We trained how to perform under pressure," Yang, a junior who majors in business administration at Beijing-based Tsinghua, told reporters. "The coaches would actually create a nerve-wracking atmosphere in order to simulate the pressure."

"The competition was really tight today, but I'm so happy that I could win," she added.

Gao Jing, an air rifle coach at Tsinghua, said Yang's mental strength is a combination of her own innate talent and her on-campus training.

"My first impression of Yang was that this is a quiet little girl, but she could shoot quite stably with calm beyond her years," Gao said of Yang's performance during a trial for admission to the shooting program at the end of 2015.

"I think over the years of keeping up with the rigorous academic study in Tsinghua while managing to train and compete consistently on my team, Yang has grown much stronger inside," added Gao, who won bronze in the women's 10m air rifle at the 2000 Sydney Games.

"It's critical for a shooting athlete to be able to stay at ease under whatever circumstances and to regroup quickly," said Gao.

"Being able to strike that delicate balance between study and athletic pursuits helps a lot in self-management mentally and psychologically, which keeps a shooter calm when needed."

Shooting roots

Tsinghua's roots in the sport date back to the 1950s when the university first formed a shooting team. After a long hiatus, shooting was reestablished on campus in 1999 and has since flourished.

With student athletes recruited from its affiliated high school, ordinary schools and sports academies, the program has consistently churned out sharpshooters for the national team, including Yi Siling, who delivered China's opening gold of the 2012 London Olympics, also in the women's 10m air rifle.

In addition to the development of top-level athletes, Tsinghua's shooting program also offers a 16-week entry-level course for students with more modest skills.

Since opening in 2002, the course has become highly coveted on campus with about 1,000 seats for each semester usually being snapped up within hours of the selection opening.

"There is a saying in Tsinghua for freshmen that you have to be lucky enough to succeed in signing up for this course once before your graduation," said Dong Zhi, who manages the program.

To better promote the sport, Tsinghua built a new shooting range at the basement of the university's sports hall in 2009 with funding raised by its alumni, and is taking pride in the program's broad educational value.

"Shooting works well as a supplement to classroom teaching in helping hone young people's mental toughness, concentration and resilience … virtues that may play a big role in their future careers of whatever jobs they choose," said Dong.