 Homecoming for Aussie Melissa
(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-08-12 08:57 Melissa Wu will be coming home today. That's the way the Chinese are looking at it anyway. Wu, Australia's best chance of a diving gold medal may live in Brisbane with her Australian mother and cannot speak a word of Chinese. But the home crowd will regard her as one of their own when she competes in the synchronized 10m platform event today.
This is because although her father Hap was born in Myanmar, his parents were born in China, and she considers herself half-Chinese. "It means a lot to me to be in Beijing given my Chinese heritage," she says. "Probably the best part is that my father and grandfather will be here to watch me and if the Olympics had been somewhere else they mightn't have come." There have already been stories in local press about "Wu Melissa" and should she upset the expected Chinese dominance of women's diving, there will be plenty more. "I know there is media interest in me here," she said. Wu, who was born in Penrith, New South Wales and teams up today with Briony Cole, first came to prominence when she won the 10m platform at the Australian Open Diving Championships in 2006, where she finished ahead of Olympic gold medalists Chantelle Newbery and Loudy Tourky. She followed that up with silver at the Commonwealth Games in the same year in Melbourne. Agencies (China Daily 08/12/2008 page23) |
