Zheng Fengrong (Chinese: 郑凤荣; Wade–Giles: Cheng Feng-jung), born in 1937 in Shandong, is a Chinese former athlete, who competed in the high jump event.

Biography

Joining the national team in 1953, Zheng broke the high jump world record with a jump of 1.77 m in 1957, making her the first Chinese woman to hold a sports world record.[1] The domestic media hailed her as "the swallow who announced that the spring of China's sports has arrived," and Chinese research claims, that her training was twice as arduous as her foreign competitors.[2] A 2007 profile in China Daily compared Zheng's popularity in her day with that of Liu Xiang today.[3]

Since the People's Republic of China did not compete in the Summer Olympics between 1952 and 1984, Zheng could not participate in the 1956 competition, won by Mildred McDaniel, whose world record Zheng bettered. In her subsequent career and in retirement she won official honours and recognition as an early athletic success for the PRC. Though persecuted for "egotism" during the Cultural Revolution,[3] she eventually rose to become vice-secretary of the China State General Sports Administration. She married the 1959 Chinese high jump champion, Duan Qiyan 段其炎.

Zheng was one of eight athletes who carried the Olympic flag in the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies.[4]

She won several medals at the Chinese National Games. She won the athletics triathlon and high jump titles at the 1959 Chinese National Games and the heptathlon at the 1965 Chinese National Games.[5] She was also successful at the GANEFO: she won the women's pentathlon and was high jump runner-up at the 1963 edition, then won a pentathlon and high jump double at the 1966 games, as well as an 80 metres hurdles bronze.[6]

Her granddaughter Nina Schultz is a heptathlete that competed for Canada internationally and at Kansas State University in the collegiate level.[7] She ultimately renounced her Canadian citizenship in 2021 for China, with her intention to compete for China in future sports events.[8]

References

  1. ↑ "Chinese Women in the History of Olympic Games". 2008-08-06. Retrieved 2019-10-10.
  2. ↑ Dong Jinxia, Women, sport, and society in modern China: holding up more than half the sky, p. 53
  3. 1 2 Si Tingting (2007-12-28). "Zheng's great leap". China Daily. Retrieved 2019-10-10.
  4. ↑ "New West Spartans - News and Results". Archived from the original on March 28, 2010. Retrieved March 11, 2010.
  5. ↑ Chinese National Games. GBR Athletics. Retrieved 2019-10-10.
  6. ↑ GANEFO Games. GBR Athletics. Retrieved 2019-10-10.
  7. ↑ "2018 Gold Coast profile". 2018 Commonwealth Games. Retrieved 2019-10-10.
  8. ↑ White, Johnathan (5 April 2021). "Tokyo 2020: China's Nina Schultz aiming to fulfil grandma's Olympic dream". SCMP. Retrieved 8 April 2021.


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