At the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Zhuang Yong won the gold medal in the women's 100m freestyle, which was also China's first Olympic gold medal in swimming at the Olympic Games. Subsequently, Qian Hong, Lin Li and Yang Wenyi won three gold medals successively, and the "five golden flowers" bloomed in Barcelona became a shining memory in the history of the Chinese Swimming Olympics. It is worth mentioning that when Yang Wenyi won the gold medal in the women's 50m freestyle with a record-breaking time of 24.79 seconds, it was his teammate Zhuang Yong who defeated him.
Because of his good face, excellent sense of water, and bright results, Yang Wenyi was once called "Chinese Mermaid" by the Associated Press. At the 1988 Seoul Olympics, the 16-year-old Yang Wenyi turned out to be a silver medal in the 50-meter freestyle event when he participated in the competition for the first time. In April 1988, at the 3rd Asian Swimming Championships held in Guangzhou, Yang Wenyi set a new world record in the women's 50m freestyle with a time of 24.98 seconds and won the championship, becoming not only the first athlete in the world to break the 25-second mark, the first Athlete in China to break the world record after 30 years since Mu Xiangxiong, and the first Chinese female athlete to break the swimming world record.
Yang Wenyi won the silver medal in the women's 50m freestyle at the Seoul Olympics
Since 1989, Yang Wenyi once fell into a low tide, stopped training, the competition results are also plummeting, and even she once thought of retiring. It was not until the Barcelona Olympics that Yang Wenyi, who had been silent for 3 years, returned to the throne. However, after the Olympic Games, Yang Wenyi announced his retirement.
Among the "Five Golden Flowers", Yang Wenyi may not be the most famous one, but he is the tallest and most beautiful. After retiring from the army, Yang Wenyi unexpectedly refused a job in the system provided for her by the organization, but tried all kinds of new things across borders, she made movies, modeled, recorded songs, hosted programs, opened a beauty salon, ran a swimming kindergarten class, and co-founded a sports communication company with her brother, but in every new field, Yang Wenyi can come and go.
In July 2007, Yang Wenyi, together with women's volleyball world champion Zhou Lumin and film and television star Fan Bingbing, attended the national parade ceremony of "Budweiser Million Cycling to welcome the Olympics".
It is worth mentioning that for the glory he has achieved in the pool, Yang Wenyi once summed it up as, "I am particularly lucky to have achievements in play." "It's true. At that time, Yang Wenyi had a vigorous love affair with Shen Jianqiang, a famous swimmer and "hardware king" of the Beijing Asian Games, and love not only did not delay her athletic performance, but became a catalyst for her to break the world record. Yang Wenyi once said, "The results are after falling in love with him, at that time, I always put training first, and every day I thought about practicing quickly, practicing well and going out to play together..." However, the "golden boy and jade girl" who created the myth at that time finally failed to come together, and what is more surprising is that many years later, Shen Jianqiang and Zhuang Yong, who is also "five golden flowers", entered the palace of marriage, and the two had a son and a daughter.
Shen Jianqiang and Zhuang Yong's family
"Mermaid" Yang Wenyi also found her own love, she married a Chinese-American, although her husband settled in the United States, she resolutely did not "immigrate". Every year, Yang Wenyi will live in the United States for a considerable period of time, and a lot of time will be spent on airplanes, shuttling between China and the United States. According to her, she could not give up the water and soil that raised her, "Shanghai is my territory!" Today, Yang Wenyi has given birth to two children, a family of four happily "temporarily living" in the United States, only on major holidays will return to China to visit relatives and friends. Yang Wenyi, who likes to play tennis, has also been working hard to promote the exchange and learning of tennis youth in China and the United States.
It is worth mentioning that after the 1993 National Games, Yang Wenyi, who was less than 21 years old, announced his retirement early, and Qian Hong, Zhuang Yong and Wang Xiaohong in the "Five Golden Flowers" also announced their retirement almost at the same time. There are many suspicions about the "five golden flowers" in the outside world. In response, Qian Hong once responded on social media, "It is understandable that some people care about this question, but I can't answer yes or no, because the answer has long been ingrained in your hearts." All I can say is that nothing can change history... If there is a medicine in the world, if you eat it, you will start faster than others, turn around more reasonably than others, and your technique is perfecter than others. ”