Fu Mingxia

Fu Mingxia (born August 16, 1978, in Wuhan, Hubei) is a retired Chinese diver, multiple Olympic gold medalist and world champion.

Fu made the transition from gymnast to springboard diver and before long was noticed by diving coach Yu Fen, who took Fu to Beijing in 1989 to train at a state-sponsored boarding school as a member of the state diving team.

Because of her remarkable talents, she became a part of China's disciplined and highly successful elite sporting programs.

Through a strenuous training program, Fu learned to set aside her fears and progressed quickly.

Training sessions averaged four to five hours a day, seven days a week, with the occasional nine-hour day.

At times, Fu practiced 100 dives a day.

In time, she was gliding so close to the platform during her dives that her short hair often touched the end during her descent toward the water.

Throughout the 1990s, Fu dominated the sport with her repertoire of extremely difficult dives.

In 1990, Fu made her international diving debut, capturing a gold at the U.S. Open and also at the Goodwill Games, held that summer in Seattle.

Her daring dives from the top of the 10-meter platform transformed the teeny 12-year-old into a national treasure.

However, with pressure mounting, Fu placed third at the Asian Games held in Beijing in the fall of 1990.

Following the loss, she changed her routine, adding moves that were technically more difficult, but which she felt more comfortable performing.

She won the platform-diving world championship in 1991 at the age of 12, making her the youngest diving champ of all time.

By 1991, Fu was talented enough to attend the diving world championships, held in Perth, Australia.

The competition was intense, and Fu found herself in eighth place in the final round because she had failed a compulsory dive.

Fu pulled herself together, however, and ended up with the title, beating out the Soviet Union's World Cup winner Yelena Miroshina by nearly 25 points.

At just 12 years old, Fu became the youngest international champion ever.

It is a title she will hold forever because after the competition, swimming's national governing body changed the rules, requiring all competitors of international competitions to be at least 14 years old.

While Fu initially made her mark on the 10-meter platform, she also began competing on the three-meter springboard.

She is also famous for being one of the youngest Olympic diving champions, having earned a gold at the 1992 Barcelona Games when she was just 13 years and 345 days old.

In April 1992, she won the gold on the springboard at the Chinese international diving tournament in Shanghai.

Fu made her Olympic debut at the 1992 Games, held in Barcelona, Spain.

During the competition, the 154 cm (5'1/2"), 43 kg (94.8 lb) Fu used her youthful fearlessness to beat out older competitors. Fu captured a gold in the platform competition. At 13, she was the youngest medal winner at the Olympics that year-and the second-youngest in the history of the Games. She also qualified as the youngest Olympic diving champion, a title she still holds.

Fu's success in her first Olympics drove her toward her second.

In preparing for the 1996 Olympics, held in Atlanta, Fu trained seven hours a day, six days a week.

Her only other activities included listening to music, watching television and getting massages.

Fu's coaches drilled her hard, but she said she found comfort and peace from the physically and mentally straining regimen through music.

Fu was in top form at the 1996 Olympics and shone on both the platform and springboard, taking gold in both events.

She was the first woman in 36 years to win both events in a single Olympics.

Shortly after Atlanta, the triple-gold-medallist decided to retire and enrolled at Beijing's Tsinghua University to study management science.

Fu also got involved in politics and in 1997 served as a delegate to the Communist Party's 15th Congress.

Fu spent about two years off the board.

By 1998, however, Fu began diving with the university team, but on her own terms.

On her own terms still meant a disciplined training schedule, but she reduced the number of hours per day down to five.

During the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Fu won her fourth gold medal, joining Americans Pat McCormick and Greg Louganis as the world's only quadruple Olympic-diving champions.

Fu Mingxia was born into a working-class family in the city of Wuhan, located along the Yangtze River in central China.

Inspired by an older sister, Fu enrolled in gymnastics at a local sports school at the age of 5.

Though she was just a child, Fu demonstrated remarkable poise and body control.

The coaches, however, felt that she was not flexible enough to make it as a gymnast.

Instead, they suggested she pursue diving, though Fu, only about seven years old at the time, could not swim.