She won the taekwondo championship in 2006 Asian Games in Doha, finished first in the 2007 Summer Universade and brought home a gold from the 2008 Asian Taekwondo Championship. But after Aug. 21 last year, Su Li-wen (蘇麗文) has been largely remembered as the national heroine who, despite falling to the ground 11 times, continued to fight until her coach carried her out of the ring in the Beijing Olympics.
Su published her first book last month. A Tough Kid (打不倒的孩子) chronicles Su’s pursuit of success over the past 18 years, based on the journals she kept while she was in graduate school. She did some of the illustrations as well.
“I hope my story can inspire people,” she said.
PHOTO: SUN CHUAN-HSIAN, TAIPEI TIMES
The fact that she did not get the perfect ending she hoped, and is still paying the price for losing one of the most important games in her life — a torn anterior cruciate ligament, a fractured toe on her left foot and a wrecked triangular fibro — has not dimmed her quest for an Olympic gold.
“I just don’t believe that that was it,” said Su in an interview with the Taipei Times.
The day before she was interviewed, Su visited National Taiwan University Hospital to get a shot for her injuries.
“I always think that the day I announce my retirement will be the day I feel I have reached the limits of my capacity,” she said. “I haven’t felt that way yet.”
But Su was not always such a tenacious fighter. A skinny child who was often in ill health, Su said she took taekwondo lessons because her parents hoped she would grow stronger through sports.
The training was grueling, Su recalled, and her brother quit after only three classes. Su persevered because she enjoyed the progress she made, and the feeling she had after conquering seemingly unbeatable foes.
“After you beat one of your strongest classmates, you start setting the goal of becoming a national champion. Then you want to take the next step to an international tournament. And the next thing you know you want to enter a global contest,” she said.
Taekwondo not only gave Su a healthier physique, but also channeled her youthful energy into discipline, she said.
During junior high, however, she thought about giving up the sport because of her lackluster performance in competition.
“I was not interested in school at all, but I was not doing well in takwondo either,” she said.
“My parents thought I was wasting my time on things that might eventually get me nowhere. They wanted me to concentrate on my studies instead,” she said.
Nonetheless, she remained active in sports and even at one point played on her school’s girls softball team.
Su continued her studies at the Taipei Physical Education Junior College, Taichung Physical Education College and National Chung Cheng University, where she trained as a national team athlete.
However, as an undergraduate, she supported herself by working three jobs.
The path to the Olympics was not an easy one for Su. She failed in her bid for the 2000 Sydney Olympics, losing to two-time Olympic Gold medalist Ann Chen (陳怡安). One of Su’s contacts fell out during the fight, blurring her vision and making her lose concentration.
She lost out on the 2004 Athens Olympics after the national team picked Chi Shu-ju (紀淑如) over her.
By the time she was chosen to represent the nation at last year’s Olympics, Su was 28 and many thought she was past her prime as an athlete. Her father had also been diagnosed with terminal nasopharyngeal cancer.
The bronze medal match was a very painful process, Su said.
“I tried to figure out how to stand on one leg and score the last point,” she said. “I was in so much pain. I bit my teeth so hard that a tooth cap broke and my gums bled.”
“I hardly cried, but when I saw my opponent score, which I thought she shouldn’t have because she only hit my hand, I couldn’t help but break into tears,” she said.
Su said she watches the match on YouTube with her friends from time to time, adding that she can’t believe that it was her in the match.
Although she finished fifth in the Beijing Games, the worldwide praise she garnered won her job offers from all three of her alma maters and one from National Taiwan Normal University to teach in their sports programs.
“People think NT$3 million [her prize from the government] was a lot of money, but it’s nothing if you add up payments for taekwondo lessons, or medical bills for injuries accumulated over the years — before and after there was a national health insurance program,” she said, commenting on requests by the parents of weightlifting bronze medalists Chen Wei-ling (陳葦綾) and Lu Ying-chi (盧映錡) for Premier Liu Chao-hsiun (劉兆玄) and President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to help their children find jobs.
She said she considered herself one of the fortunate few who were able to compete in the Olympics and retire without worrying about what she was going to do next.
Many of her college classmates were working as waiters or store clerks because there weren’t many companies that would hire sports college graduates, she said.
Su accepted the offer from her alma mater in Taichung, which is now called National Taiwan Sports University, Taichung Campus, because “it has more athletes training for the national teams” and she wants pass on her experience in international competition.
Asked to comment on billiard prodigy Wu Chia-ching’s (吳珈慶) decision to apply for Singaporean citizenship because the city-state promised him more than what the Chinese-Taipei Billiard Association could offer, and golfer Tseng Ya-ni’s (曾雅妮) appeal for the government to pay more attention to her sport, Su said: “I am more concerned about whether I have done my best as an athlete than about the government resources I can get.”
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and
RSS