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Tokyo Olympics: Zheng Ninali makes history as China’s first naturalised Olympian
The 22-year-old makes history with PB in heptathlon 100m hurdles, three years after Commonwealth Games silver for CanadaAthlete, also known as Nina Schultz, fulfils her high jump world record-holding grandmother’s Olympic dream in Tokyo
Heptathlete Zheng Ninali has made history at the Tokyo Olympic Stadium where she became China’s first naturalised Olympian and fulfilled her grandmother’s Olympic dream.
The 22-year-old was previously known as Nina Schultz and competed for Canada, including winning a silver at the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast in 2018 where she finished second to Britain’s Olympic champion Katerina Johnson-Thompson.
Born in New Westminster, British Columbia, she was eligible to naturalise for China through her mother Debra Duan, whose parents were acclaimed Chinese athletes.
Zheng decided to compete for China and naturalised to become a Chinese citizen, having to wait to be eligible to compete.
She was ruled eligible to compete in national representative competitions for China from April according to World Athletics, marking the end of the cooling-off period since she last competed for Canada.
Zheng competed in a regional competition in Shandong in March after domestic media confirmed her naturalisation.
She impressed at a National Games test event in April but still fell short of the Olympic qualifying target of 6,420 points in the run up to
Zheng won the World Athletics Challenge in Arona, Tenerife, in June with 6,358 points – just off the automatic qualification mark – and followed this up with 6,324 points at the Estonia Championships.
She qualified based on her No 20 world ranking and made history with a personal best in the first event of the Tokyo heptathlon, finishing fifth in her 100-metre hurdles heat in 13.27 seconds.
China’s Nina Schultz to fulfil grandmother’s Olympic dream
2 Jul 2021
The Olympic dream has been a long time coming for the former University of Georgia and Kansas State University athlete.
Even in 2017, while she was still competing for Canada, Zheng made it clear that she wanted to compete for the country of her maternal grandparents at China’s National Games.
“I came here not out of a sudden impulse, but because I always wanted to fulfil my grandmother’s dream of competing in the Olympics,” Schultz told Xinhua at those National Games. “I want to participate in the 2020 Games to honour my grandma, ideally with a gold medal.”
Her grandmother Zheng Fengrong was the first Chinese athlete to break a world record when she cleared 1.77m in the high jump in 1957, while Duan Qiyan, Schultz’s grandfather, was national high jump champion in 1959.
However, circumstances prevented either competing on the biggest stages as China was in the midst of an Olympic boycott starting with the Melbourne Games in 1956.
The world record of 1.76m that Zheng beat a year later was set at the Games by US gold medal winner Mildred McDaniel-Singleton.
Beyond a 28-year Olympic boycott that only ended in Los Angeles in 1984, Zheng was also a victim of the Cultural Revolution, as China Daily reported in 2007.
“She was persecuted for an alleged ‘crime’ of being overly egotistical, a crime that seems ridiculous by today’s more liberal standards” they wrote.
There could be another Chinese Olympian in the family.
The heptathlete’s older brother Ty – known as Zheng Enlai – is hoping to represent China in ice hockey at Beijing 2022. |
