Dream to be launched into orbit

By Wang Qian (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-03-27 09:59

She had hoped to celebrate the Olympic Games last year as part of the youth wushu team.

But when she injured her ankle in practice and had to leave the team, Luo Jie, now 18, found another way to attend the Games - by composing a song for it.

Her song, Ave Coubertin, an ode to the father of the modern Olympics, was played in several stadiums during the Games and clinched the girl another Olympic score - as a torchbearer for the Games.

"What led me to write this song was not only my desire to do something for the Olympics, but also because the life of Pierre de Coubertin moved me," Luo said.

Others, in turn, were moved by her song, which will spread the joy of her experience even further when a satellite carrying a version of her performance is launched into space next year.

It is part of a project organized by the China Association for Science and Technology, the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games and the Chinese Society of Astronautics in 2008.

The satellite "Hope" will be laucnhed into orbit next year carrying soil and water experiments designed by teenagers across the country. It will broadcast wireless signals and programs back to earth.

"This is just a beginning I have already sent a letter to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) suggesting they broadcast my song for Coubertin in every Olympic Games," the student from the High School Affiliated to Renmin University of China said.

Pierre de Coubertin, born in Paris in 1863, founded the IOC in 1894. At the age of 69, he published his Olympic Memoirs in which he emphasized the intellectual and philosophical nature of his enterprise and his wish to "place the role of the IOC, right from the start, very much above that of a simple sports association". Coubertin died in September 1937 after a life devoted to the revival of a modern Olympics.

Luo started learning wushu at seven and won silver and bronze medals in Beijing wushu competitions for primary and secondary school students.

At 11, when Beijing won the bid to host the Olympic Games, Luo became a member of a youth wushu team celebrating the news at the Great Hall of the People. Luo's mother said her daughter is no different from others, except perhaps she possesses an extremely strong desire "to do something big".

Besides preparing for college entrance exams this year, Luo is checking her mailbox every day for a letter from the IOC about her suggestion to play her song at subsequent Games.

"She is just too busy these days and we really get a little worried about her health, but it is her dream," said the mother.