LOS ANGELES, July 23 (Xinhua) — The U.S. Olympics Committee (USOC) announced on Monday that five U.S. Olympic hopefuls and one U.S. Paralympic hopeful will travel to Beijing for the USOC Beijing Goodwill Tour.
The trip, on Aug. 1-5, commemorates the one-year-out date of the 2008 Olympic Games, which begin Aug. 8, 2008, with the Opening Ceremonies in Beijing, the USOC said in a statement e-mailed to Xinhua.
The athletes participating in the tour include three Olympians and one Paralympian, and all six are training to qualify for the 2008 Olympic and Paralympic Games. In addition, three have Chinese ancestry. They represent the sports of archery, badminton, BMX cycling (making its Olympic debut in Beijing), fencing, table tennis and Paralympic swimming.
Their visit include press conferences, broadcast sessions, photo opportunities and public appearances, the statement said.
The athletes include:
— Howard Bach, badminton. Bach, together with his partner Tony Gunawan, won the 2005 World Championships doubles title, the first world title ever won by U.S. badminton athletes. Bach was born in Saigon, Vietnam, and moved to San Francisco when he was 3 years old.
— Gao Jun, Table Tennis. After winning a silver medal at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain, for her native country of China, Gao became a U.S. citizen and will train to compete for theUnited States in 2008. She is a three-time Olympian (1992, 2000, 2004) and has been a member of the U.S. National Team since 1997. She is the top female table tennis athlete in the United States, currently ranked 16th in the world. She studies economic trade at the East China University of Science and Technology in Shanghai, China.
— Lindsay Pian, Archery. Pian is ranked No. 3 in the United States and is attending the 2007 Pan American Games and World Archery Championships. Her father, Robert, is a first generation Chinese-American and both of her grandparents are from the Beijing/Tianjin area. Her grandfather was a civil engineer and worked on the Yangtze River Three Gorges dam during its conceptual stages.
— Erin Popovich, Paralympic Swimming. In her first Paralympic Games in 2000, Popovich won a whopping six medals – three gold and three silver -and set four world records in the process. She put together what may have been the most impressive performance of any athlete at the 2004 Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece, where she competed in seven events and came home with seven gold medals. Popovich was born with achondroplasia, a genetic disorder of bone growth that is evident at birth.
— Donny Robinson, BMX Cycling. Robinson turned pro in 2002 and has since become the top BMX rider in the world. His latest career victory was winning the 2006 National Bicycle League (NBL) pro title. He has transcended physical stereotypes to become a BMX superstar. At 5’5″ and 150 lbs, he dominates a sport full of 6’0″, 200 lbs athletes.
— Iris Zimmerman, Fencing. Zimmerman competed at the 2000 Olympic Games, finishing fourth in the team foil event and 11th in individual foil. She had all but hung up her sword until the IOC brought back the women’s team foil event for 2008 after its absence in 2004. She was a campaign worker for California Democratic candidate Steve Westly, but put her career on hold to train to compete in China, her mother’s homeland.