A TEENAGE girl with a minor mental disability has been recommended to compete in national swimming qualifiers for the 2011 Special Olympics in Athens.
The girl, Fu Xiao, 13, has claimed many awards in the past year, including the 50-meter breaststroke gold medal at the 5th National Special Olympics Games in Beijing last year, the Daily Sunshine reported Friday.
Fu was put under foster care by Shenzhen Social Welfare Center with Li Congzhen and her husband in July 2004. Li and her husband had applied to foster Fu and a mute girl after their daughter was enrolled in a college.
Li sent Fu to Shenzhen Yuanping Special Education School in 2008, where the girl s swimming talent was spotted by professional swimming coaches, the paper said.
Since then, the school had given Fu special 1.5-hour training each day.
The hard training paid off with the numerous swimming awards.
The girl is very filial and we could not live without her. I don t expect her to win every competition but hope she can live a happy life as a normal person, said Li.
Doing well in her studies, Fu also likes using computers.
I like playing computer games and surfing the Internet, where I can meet a lot of friends from different places and broaden my horizons, she said.
Fu s coach said the odds of Fu qualifying were 50 percent.
Shenzhen will build a second boarding school for disabled children this year while building more obstacle-free facilities throughout the city, a meeting of the Shenzhen Disabled Persons Federation was told Friday.
(Li Hao)
