Translation of July 24 article on sina.com
July 24th, 2006by John
Here’s another translation by Raymond of some of the key points from an article that appeared today on sina.com. It’s great to see that Raymond got props from sina.com in this article! Thanks again for the great work, Raymond!
1. Every morning, Yao Ming will show up to the training court of the National Sports Bureau. Beijing may be sunny, cloudy or rainy, but Yao Ming was always there punctually for his rehabilitation.
2. The national team is currently away in Europe for its exhibition matches/tournament. So the dormitory at Tiantan Apartments is very quiet at night time, and Yao Ming just indulged in his virutal war games over the computer.
3. But every morning, he still shows up punctually in the stadium and works on his own rehabilitation. So other than some public relations or charity activities, his daily life is just centered there between his room in Tiantan Apartments and the stadium in the National Sports Bureau.
4. The world just craves for every single move and news about Yao Ming. Ever since his foot injury in Utah on April 11th, he sort of disappeared from the media limelight. The news clip outside of Houston’s Memorial Hermann Hospital (even though it did not have Yao Ming in it) filmed by the Shanghai Sports TV had been repeated over and over on TV. The latest news on July 21 about Yao Ming relayed from Reuters has lingered on ESPN headlines for the past week.
5. And on the official Yao Ming fan forum, a certain net fan, Raymond, had created a dedicated thread to gather all information/updates on Yao Ming’s summer activities, and has become one of the heaviest hit threads (over 30,500 hits) in the recent months, receiving over 33 pages of fans’ responses. [Editor’s note: Corrections have been applied to some of the inaccuracies or confusing points that appeared in the sina.com article.]
6. Everybody is anxiously awaiting his return to court. Yao Ming is anxious but calm on his return, as he is the one who knows his body better than anybody. As he trains strenuously, he can feel the small changes in his body, and his confidence is slowly returning.
7. In the training stadium, he was asked to do the to-and-fro sprint between the baselines of the court. For the Rockets, Jeff Van Gundy had stipulated that every player has to do the sprint 5 times across the court (counted as one session). There will be a rest of 2 and a half minutes between one session, and every player has to do 4 such sessions. For centers, they have to finish on average under 70 seconds for one session. When healthy, Yao Ming can complete one session within 55 seconds. But now, he was so tired after one session that he just huffed and puffed sitting on the bench by the courtside. “66 seconds” shouted the trainer, and Yao Ming just shook his head.
8. He had not run to his best capabilities; he knows he can do much better. And that 66 seconds was the result from a couple days earlier. He can surely run faster than that now.
9. Per the doctor’s advice, Yao Ming cannot return to court until August 1, and that is only 7 days from now. So there is not much time left for Yao Ming to try to gel with the national team and to get ready for the World Championships. Everyone of his fans knows there is no need for Yao Ming to play long minutes in the national team’s encounter with the USA national team on August 7th in Gaungzhou. But still it is going to be significant as it will be the first time after four months that Yao Ming will be returning to court and play competitive basketball. So every Yao Ming fan is just anxiously counting down that 14 days…….
The orginal article can be found in Chinese on sina.com by clicking here.