"Badminton prodigy" Liu Yutong

On the afternoon of September 4, in the Tokyo Paralympic Games badminton women's singles WH2 (wheelchair level 2) final, 17-year-old Chinese teenager Liu Yutong defeated his teammate Xu Tingting 2-0 to win the gold medal.

"Liu Yutong is quiet and introverted, but once the Chinese supernova picks up her badminton racket, she transforms into a brave warrior, unleashing her fighting spirit and showing her passionate side." When Liu Yutong won the gold medal, the official website of the international disabled people commented on her.

"I'm still very young, so I don't have any special feelings about being one of the best athletes in the world. I still have to be humble and train hard. Liu Yutong said calmly.

Liu Yutong's gold medal can be described as the expectation of all. As one of China's famous disabled badminton players, she was specially introduced by the Tokyo Olympic Organizing Committee long before the opening of the Paralympic Games, praising her as a "Chinese badminton prodigy".

Liu Yutong is from Cangzhou, Hebei Province, and lost her legs in a car accident when she was five years old. Because her family is poor, Liu Yutong often supports her life with her hands at home, so her arms have become very strong. At the age of 11, her family saw the information that Hebei Province was recruiting disabled athletes and sent her to the table tennis team with the idea of letting her try. By chance, Liu Yutong was favored by a badminton coach while practicing table tennis and began a badminton training journey.

At the age of 12, badminton star Dong Jiong became Liu Yutong's coach, and her performance began to take a qualitative leap: at the age of 13, Liu Yutong won the second place in women's singles and the first place in mixed doubles at the national championships. She then won the Asian Para Games; in 2017, Liu Yutong, who was less than 14 years old, continued to work hard to win the women's singles championship at the World Para Badminton Championships; at the 2019 World Championships, she won the women's singles gold medal again, and won the women's doubles championship with her teammates.

Since coming to Tokyo, Liu Yutong has always received everyone's attention and is also considered to be one of the most popular candidates for badminton women's singles and women's doubles at the Paralympic Games.

Dong Jiong said: "I took Liu Yutong, mainly based on my past competition experience. I passed on to her the experience of on-the-spot changes I had accumulated over the years in the game, and I hope that she will learn something in this regard – not only technically, but also in the psychology of the game, I can also support her. ”

Off the field, painting is Liu Yutong's greatest hobby. "I'm basically painting except for training. Originally, it was because I wanted to draw when I was young. Whenever I pick up a paintbrush, I feel very grounded inside. I should have had some talent for drawing, because it was completely self-taught and no one taught me. Liu Yutong's words revealed her love for painting.

On the morning of the closing of the Tokyo Paralympic Games on September 5, Liu Yutong will also work with his teammate Yin Menglu to compete with Japan's Rimi Sariana and Yamazaki Yuma for the women's doubles WH (wheelchair) gold medal.