With two golds and three results under the Olympic qualifying A standards, China's leading breaststroker Qi Hui seemed recovering from a long period of downturn to enhance the medal hope of the host swimming team at the upcoming Olympic Games.

"My girl came back! I had waited it for long," said Qi's coach Ye Jin, watching her long-time prentice stepping on top of the podium after winning the women's 200 meters individual medley on Monday.

"I'm quite satisfied with the result today and that of the previous two events," said Qi who also grabbed the gold in the women's 100 meters breaststroke on Sunday and made the final in the 200 meters breaststroke.

"I have achieved my goals of swimming under the Olympic qualifying A standards in the three events, and two golds in hand made it better," Qi added.

Although the results were far behind Qi's personal best and the golds were not weighty enough for lacking of world-class rivals, the 23-year-old Qi did get though great hardship to come back the pool.

Qi experienced a Waterloo defeat at the 2007 World Championships after "using an unsuccessful training method" as she said, and disappeared from the competitive swimming for almost a whole year.

"I always felt there were many worms crawling on my face," Qi recalled her suffering time under the training method of "living in high altitude and training in plain". "Sometimes my arms were cramped and my heart throbbed vehemently. So I even failed to practice normally."

"I felt I didn't know how to swim. I just floated in the water," Qi explained her helpless feelings during last year's Melbourne World Championhips where she finished her first race with a stunning 25th position in the 200 meters individual medley heats in two minutes and 19.05 seconds, 7.13 seconds behind her gold winning time at the Doha Asian Games three month ago.

Back from Melbourne, Qi could not practice as a professional swimmer. She even felt difficult to do a pull-up.

"I felt distressed for her," said Qi's coach Ye. "But her teammates and I encouraged her all along. We constantly told her that she was doing better and better."

Meanwhile, physical trainer Wang Weixing helped Qi a lot.

"At first, I was less in confidence. I wasn't sure if I could recover," said Qi. "But coach Wang tutored me with lots of interesting measures so that I didn't feel weary during the training."

Qi believed that she might have been retired without the help from coach Ye and Wang.

"Now, I think I could go on competing in the pool," Qi said firmly.

Qi admitted she was still not in top form but said she would try her best in the national Olympic trials less than two months later.
 
(Xinhua News Agency February 5, 2008)