Tokyo 2020: China’s Nina Schultz aiming to fulfil grandma’s Olympic dream
- Story dates back to 1957 when Schultz’s grandmother Zheng Fengrong became first Chinese world record holder
- China’s first naturalised track and field athlete eligible to compete from April 12 after switching from Canada
The 22-year-old is eligible to compete in national representative competitions for China from April according to the World Athletics website, marking the end of the cooling-off period since she last competed for Canada.
The Canada-born heptathlete, who is known as Zheng Ninali in China, competed in a regional competition in Shandong last month after domestic media confirmed her naturalisation.
She took part in China’s National Games in 2017, indicating her willingness to compete for the country of her maternal grandparents’ birth back then.
“I came here not out of a sudden impulse, but because I always wanted to fulfil my grandmother’s dream of competing in the Olympics,” Schultz told Xinhua at those National Games.
Schultz had already applied for Chinese citizenship by that point with the dream of competing in Tokyo for China.
Schultz’s dream to compete for China is a long time coming – in fact it dates back to 1957.
“I want to participate in the 2020 Games to honour my grandma, ideally with a gold medal,” she said in 2017.
Both of her grandparents were star athletes, with grandmother Zheng Fengrong the first Chinese athlete to break a world record when she cleared 1.77m in the high jump in 1957.
Zheng’s stardom was such she has since been likened to China’s first track and field gold medal winner Liu Xiang, the star of the Athens 2004 Olympics.
Duan Qiyan, Schultz’s grandfather, was national high jump champion in 1959.
However, circumstances prevented either competing on the biggest stages as China was in the midst of an Olympic boycott starting with the Melbourne Games in 1956.
It’s a case of what might have been as the world record of 1.76m that Zheng beat a year later was set at the Games by US gold medal winner Mildred McDaniel-Singleton.
Beyond a 28-year Olympic boycott that only ended in Los Angeles in 1984, Zheng was also a victim of the Cultural Revolution, as China Daily reported in 2007.
“She was persecuted for an alleged ‘crime’ of being overly egotistical, a crime that seems ridiculous by today’s more liberal standards” they wrote.
Schultz’s naturalisation has been the subject of debate in Canada and China amid tensions between the two countries.
There may be another source of debate if Schultz’s older brother Ty – known as Zheng Enlai – gets to represent China in ice hockey at Beijing 2022.
The 23-year-old played for Beijing Kunlun Red Star and China Daily reported on how the “highly touted defencemen” had Olympic hopes back in 2018.
Both grandchildren could follow in Zheng’s footsteps of “training hard for China’s glory”, as the former high jumper described her training days in an interview with China Women’s News in 2019.
To see that is her wish.
“We need to live a healthy life. We want to see our grandchildren participate in Olympic Games representing China,” Zheng said.
Before that Schultz needs to meet the Olympic qualification benchmark.
After three years out of international competition that is a significant hurdle but her past suggests that she is a special talent and it is little wonder Chinese social media users welcomed her to the national fold.
Schultz won silver in the 2018 Commonwealth Games heptathlon, finishing behind world No 1 and Tokyo 2020 favourite Katarina Johnson-Thompson, of Britain.
