Fu Mingxia

Updated: 2004-08-02 09:57

champion of women's 3m springboard at the 27th Olympic Games.

Born: 16 August 1978

Birthplace: Wuhan, China

Height: 1.55m (5 feet, 1 inch)

Weight: 48kg (106 pounds)

Events: springboard, platform

Fu Mingxia left home at the age of 9 to train in Beijing, 1000 kilometres away. There, she practised diving every day with respected coach Yu Fen and often endured excruciating pain as an adult sat on her outstretched knees - intended to correct her posture.

The sacrifices began to pay off 12 days before her 12th birthday when Fu earned the platform-diving gold medal at the 1990 Goodwill Games. Six months later, she became the youngest diver ever to win a gold at the World Championships. That prompted the international governing body to rule divers must turn 14 by the year of Olympics, World Championship or World Cup competition to participate, knocking her out of the 1991 World Cup.

Fu returned for the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games and became the youngest platform diver ever to win Olympic gold. She followed with a second gold in the platform at the 1994 World Championships, then easily won both the platform and springboard in the 1996 Atlanta Games.

"Tired spiritually" from years of competition, Fu then retired and avoided a dive for almost two years. In 1998, she decided to return and won two golds in her 1999 University Games comeback. Now, victories in the springboard and platform at the Sydney 2000 Games would make her the first diver to win five Olympic golds and only the third with double victories at different Games.