Courage that Touched the world

She falls but she keep on going. This is amazing. I was stunned and touched by her courage to continue.



They continue after Zhang Dan nasty fall. Every one in the podium were touched by her courage to continue. This is the spirit of sport in Olympics.

Below is quoted from the website.

Figure Skating: The courage of a 20-year-old grips Games
Feb 14 2006
By Jon Bramley

TURIN, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Zhang Dan is only 20 and probably knows nothing of the great acts of courage and defiance which have graced the Olympics Games over the past 110 years.

But on Monday night she wrote her own piece of Games history which will never be forgotten by the thousands who witnessed it in the ice rink or the many millions who watched on television.

The tiny, elfin-faced ice dancer had an outside chance of a gold when she and partner Zhang Hao took to the ice to round off a mesmerising night in the pairs event.

Within a few seconds of their routine their hopes were dashed. Zhang was thrown high into the air and span in a blur four times in an attempt at the rarely witnessed quadruple Salchow.

To gasps all around a packed Palavela, Zhang misjudged her landing and hit the ice with a sickening thud. Her legs crumpled beneath her like a new-born fawn and, all dignity lost, she slithered into a crash barrier on her backside.

For a second or two, she remained there, a broken figure before gingerly regaining her feet and attempting to continue the routine. It was clear within a few further seconds she could do no such thing.

Her background music stopped and the fixed smile of the skater was replaced by a grimace of pain. After a few more moments she skated stiffly towards her coach.

That appeared to be the end of it but Zhang, as we were all to discover, has a backbone of pure tungsten steel.

After a couple more minutes she started slowly circling the ice again before indicating she was ready to carry on.

The crowd, finally catching on to this remarkable feat of sporting bravery, broke into instantaneous applause and then watched in silent entrancement as Zhang returned to this sporting high wire balancing act.



HIGH-RISK

Only she will know how she got through the next five or six minutes but by the end of it, Zhang and her partner had completed the rest of their routine, involving several more high-risk spins without so much as a blade out of place.

Their reward at the end was deafening cheering -- louder than for the gold-medal Russian pair who had preceeded them -- and a standing ovation from the entire arena.

Zhang received her marks with a huge bandage on her thigh and an ice pack on her knee. Extraordinarily, the Chinese had bounced back from this early-routine crash to earn enough points for the silver.

At a news conference, Zhang gave a good impression of a young woman who did not understand what the fuss was about.

She described her fall as "probably a good experience for my future career" but spoke almost nothing of the courage she had summoned to carry on after such a tumble.

In fact, nothing she will do in the sport will be remembered in the same way even if she wins at the next three Games.

Pietri Dorando, the little marathon runner from Italy, was a first class runner who repeatedly won the leading races of his day but is remembered today as the man who was helped over the line in the London Games of 1908 after collapsing completely spent within metres of the finishing line.

His aides succeeded only in ensuring his disqualification but they also confirmed his place indelibly in sporting history while the winner of that race has long since been forgotten.

Most would be hard pressed to name another sportsman or woman who even took part in those Games but Dorando's memory is revered in athletics to this day.

You can fast forward nearly 90 years from Dorando to Kerri Strug, the U.S. gymnast.

She also had a glittering career but it was only her courage in pulling off a gold medal-winning vault for the home team at the Atlanta Games while her badly sprained ankle was heavily strapped that confirms her place in sporting history.

That was only 10 years ago but today papers and Websites still refer to those few seconds of almost foolhardy bravery as the defining moment of the 1996 Atlanta Games.

We may just have seen the defining moment of the 20th Winter Olympics in Turin's Palavela ice rink on Monday night.