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July 19-25, 1996

The Asian American Olympians

This year's U.S. team includes 18 APAs competing in 12 events

By Bert Eljera

In 100 years of the Olympic Games, Asian Pacific American athletes have certainly made their mark-from the legendary swimmer Duke Kahanamoku to Greg Louganis, perhaps the greatest Olympic diver ever.

This year in Atlanta is no different. Of the 660 athletes who will represent the United States, 18 are of Asian descent.

The entire women's table tennis team is made up of Chinese Americans. The men's team is anchored by another Chinese American, David Zhuang, who is considered one of the best prospects for a gold medal.

The lone men's entry in badminton is Kevin Han, who was born and raised in Shanghai and came to the United States in 1989 when he was 17. He is the current U.S. national champion. The women's team consists of Linda French and Erika Von Heiland, a former Philippine singles champion who now lives in Anaheim, Calif.

Of the six members of the women's fencing team, two are Asian Pacific Americans. One member of the men's team, Peter Westbrook, is also of Asian ancestry.

There are two APAs on the shooting and judo teams, and there is one APA on the baseball, softball, volleyball, and synchronized swimming teams.

And then there is Amy Chow, the 18-year-old girl from San Jose, Calif., who captured the hearts of Americans when she bravely picked herself up after a fall on the balance beam to eventually qualify for the gymnastics team.

Obviously, the chances of winning an Olympic medal vary for each athlete. Some may finish the competition without winning a medal. But, the presence of these APA athletes on the U.S. team underscores the vitality the community brings to American society.

AMY CHOW
Gymnastics

Amy Chow's Olympic Dream nearly turned into a disaster at the gymnastics trials.

During one of her flips on the balance beam, she hit her head against the apparatus, which resulted in a red, nasty welt above her right eye. But showing the grit that had made her a champion gymnast, she finished her routine.

She finished 13th on the balance beam, but her strong performances in the floor exercises, the uneven bars, and the vault allowed her to finish sixth and thus earn a berth on the seven-women Olympic team.

Chow started gymnastics at age 3 when her mother, Susan, could not find a willing ballet teacher. She instead enrolled at the West Valley Gymnastics School near her hometown of San Jose, and started competing when she was 8.

In 1992, she competed in Argentina and Mexico. In 1993, she competed in Japan. In 1994, she was on the second team that took part in the team world championship in Germany.

Chow has been on the national team for the past six years. She was on the national team that won the gold medal in the Pan American Games, where she won the gold in the vault, the silver on the uneven bars, and the bronze in the all-around competition. She qualified for the 1995 world championship team, but sprained her ankle two days before her scheduled departure and failed to make the trip.

Chow, 18, has signed a letter of intent with Stanford University, where she expects to continue her gymnastics career. She plans to go to medical school. Her parents both immigrated from Hong Kong more than 20 years ago and met as students at San Jose State University.

AMY FENG
Table Tennis

Ranked the No. 1 woman player in the U.S., Amy Feng, 27, is competing in women's singles. She placed first in the 1994 North American championship and second in the U.S. Open that year.

She learned to play table tennis in her hometown of Tianjin, near Beijing, when she was 9 years old. She immigrated to the United States in 1992 and has since been the top woman player in the country.

Feng finished second in the 1996 U.S. Olympic trials. She placed first in singles, women's doubles, and mixed doubles at the U.S. Olympic Festival in 1995.

She lives in Wheaton, Md.

KEVIN HAN
Badminton

The United States' best bet for a gold in badminton, Kevin Han, 23, is a two-time national champion, and is ranked 55th in the world.

He can beat everyone but the 10 best players in the world, according to Goran Sterner, the U.S. Olympic coach. "They are so good, they're in another level," Sterner said.

The sport is dominated by players from Indonesia, Malaysia, China, Korea, Denmark, and Sweden. Badminton became an Olympic sport in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

A native of Shanghai, China, Han arrived in Queens, N.Y., in 1989 to live with his father, a cook at a Chinese restaurant. He changed his name from Han Qi Chi to Kevin Han, and found a job as a busboy at the restaurant where his father worked. For nearly two years, he did not play badminton.

Han learned the game back in China at the urging of his mother, who thought he had a future in the sport. He played badminton at the junior level for four years and attended the Sports Institute of Technology, where some of China's best badminton players go.

But when he came to the United States, he was too busy and did not have the time to play. In 1991, a friend took him to a club tournament at Columbia University, where he caught the eye of an official of the badminton federation. Han was invited to train at the United States Olympic Education Center at Northern Michigan University. In 1992, he won the national junior championship.

But, the badminton program at Northern Michigan University was cancelled that summer. So, Han went to Chicago to train with Kampol Surapiboonchai, who operated a badminton school.

At a tournament in Connecticut, Han met Jian Liu, who happened to be a friend of his coach in China and now lives in Long Island. He went back to New York and started training with Liu, whose rigorous program enabled him to get back in shape.

In 1994, Han became the national badminton champion. He repeated the feat in 1995. He reached the round of 32 in the last world championship. He will compete in the men's singles in Atlanta.

NHI LAN LE
Women's Epee (Fencing)

Two years after learning epee fencing, Nhi Lan Le, who was born in Nha Trang, Vietnam, has reached the pinnacle of her sport as a member of the women's fencing team.

The 32-year-old Le finished third in the Division 1 tournament in 1995, after placing 12th in the same event two years earlier. She was 17th in foil, another event in fencing, and seventh in epee at the Canada championship this year.

Le was 12th in the A section of the World Cup championship in Sweden this year. She has been a member of the national team since 1989.

A graduate of the University of North Carolina, Le works at a brokerage company in Atlanta. She speaks fluent Vietnamese and French. She learned fencing in a physical education class.

ROGER MAR
Men's Rapid-fire Pistol (Shooting)

Mar, 28, a student at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, was the youngest U.S. pistol shooter at the 1992 Olympics, where he finished ninth in rapid-fire.

A descendant of Chinese immigrants, Mar placed first in the 1996 U.S. Olympic trials, an improvement from his silver-medal finish the year before. He has competed internationally since 1990, when he finished ninth in rapid-fire at the Munich World Cup.

This year, he was ninth again in the Milan World Cup, the most prestigious international shooting competition, and won the silver at the North American Shooting championships.

His best finish was a bronze medal and a team gold at the 1992 World Cup in Mexico. In 1993, he was the U.S. rapid-fire champion.

Mar began shooting pistol in 1980 because he said it was more challenging than rifle shooting, which he learned at age 7 from his father, a Scoutmaster. He lives in Seattle.

JOHN MCNALLY
Men's Rapid fire-Pistol (Shooting)

Born in Okinawa to a Japanese mother and Olympian James McNally, John McNally has been in the sport of shooting since he was 16. At 18, he was the national collegiate service rifle champion.

In 1982, he won the first of half a dozen rapid-fire pistol gold medals at the U.S. International Shooting Championship. In 1994, he also won the gold at the USA Shooting National Championship.

McNally, 40, captured the bronze at the 1996 UIT World Cup in Atlanta and the gold at the North American shooting championships. In 1991, he won the silver at the Munich World Cup, the bronze at the Korea World Cup, and the gold at the Pan Am Games.

He lives with his wife and three children in Heath, Texas, where he also engages in drag racing, scuba diving, and flying remote-controlled airplanes. He is the district manager of a local business.

JIM VO PARQUE
Baseball

A sophomore at UCLA, Jim Vo Parque, 20, was the Bruins' top starter last year. He earned All-Pac 10 Honorable Mention, leading his school with 84 strikeouts in 14 starts.

At Crescenta Valley High School, he compiled a 12-3 record as a senior, and was voted League Player of the Year and MVP. He was drafted in the 50th round by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1994.

The only left-handed pitcher on the U.S. Olympic team, Parque said that playing in the Olympics has been a lifelong goal.

"I have always wanted to be an Olympian," said Parque, a business economics student at UCLA. "I want to do the best for my country that I can."

ERIKA VON HEILAND
Badminton

Born and raised in the Philippines, Erika Von Heiland is competing in her second Olympics. She competed in the 1992 Barcelona Games, where she lost in the round of 64. In Atlanta, she will compete in singles and doubles with partner Linda French.

Von Heiland began playing badminton in her teens after suffering an arm injury that prevented her from playing tennis, which is her first love. She became so skilled in her new sport, however, that she soon became the juniors champion in the Philippines.

She became a member of the Philippine national team several years before she came to the United States in the 1980s. She has been on the U.S. team since 1989, when she played in the world championships.

Now 30, Von Heiland was ranked 77th in the world this year in singles and 29th in doubles with partner French. She works for Home Depot in Southern California through the Olympics Jobs Opportunity Program. She graduated magna cum laude from Arizona State University in 1994.

WEI WANG
Table Tennis

Urged by her aunt, Wei Wang, 35, started table tennis when she was 11 years old in Beijing. She became a member of the powerful Beijing team at the age of 13.

She moved to the United States 10 years ago and immediately made her mark in the sport. She placed first in women's singles in 1990 and 1991. She will play women's doubles with Lily Yip in Atlanta.

In international competitions, Wang placed third in women's doubles and fifth in women's singles at the 1995 Pan Am Games. She finished first in women's singles at the 1995 Chinese New Year tournament, and second in women's doubles at the English Open last year.

She has been a member of a U.S. world championship team two times, but this is her first Olympic Games. Wang lives in Pasadena, Calif.

PETER WESTBROOK
Men's Sabre (Fencing)

Peter Westbrook's mother, a Japanese American, bribed him $5 to start fencing when he was a boy. At 16, he participated in his first competition.

There was no stopping him from that point on. Westbrook has been a member of the Olympic team six times, beginning in 1976. He captured the bronze in individual sabre at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles and became the first American in 24 years to win an Olympic medal in fencing.

He has won the gold medal three times in the Pan Am Games, and has been a member of the U.S. World Championship team 11 times. He finished eighth in the World Championship in Colorado in 1989.

Westbrook, 44, has won the U.S. national championship a record 13 times, the last in 1995. He has been named Athlete of the Year by the US. Fencing Association four times.

This year, he was inducted to the U.S. Fencing Hall of Fame. Westbrook, whose father is black, founded the Peter Westbrook Foundation to teach fencing to inner-city youth in New York City.

LILY YIP
Table Tennis

A former member of the Chinese national team who is considered a powerhouse in international table tennis, Lily Yip, 32, will be competing in her second Olympics as an American.

She was first in the 1996 U.S. Olympic trials and will compete in both singles and doubles in Atlanta, the same events she participated in the 1992 Barcelona Games.

Yip has been on the Pan Am Games team twice and on the world championship team three times. In 1991, she captured the silver in the Pan Am Games.

Yip was born in Canton, China, where she took up table tennis at 7. She was Chinese national champion in 1985 and became a member of the Chinese national team. She immigrated to the United States in 1987 and is now a coach in New Jersey.

DAVID ZHUANG
Table Tennis

After moving to the United States in 1990, David Zhuang, a native of Guondung, China, has taken American table tennis by storm. Last year, he scored a grand slam-winning the singles, doubles, and mixed doubles at the U.S. national championships.

In the Olympic trials this year, he placed second in the singles competition, which he will compete in Atlanta. He was also national singles champion in 1994 and 1993.

Zhuang, 33, lives in East Brunswick, N.J.

FELICIA ZIMMERMAN
Women's Foil (Fencing)

Twenty-one-year-old Felicia Zimmermann was the first American woman to win a junior World Cup gold medal at a tournament in Italy three years ago.

A two-time national champion in Division I women's foil, Zimmermann has competed in the world championship, the world university games, Pan Am Games, and the Junior Olympics.

She was an alternate on the 1992 Olympic team, and finished seventh in the 1994 world championships. This year, she was second at the Canada championship and seventh at a World Cup competition in Cuba.

Born to a German American father and a Chinese American mother, Zimmermann speaks German and Chinese. She took part in her first tournament at the age of 8. She was last year's Sportswoman of the Year in Rochester, N.Y.

Other APA athletes competing in this year's Olympic Games include:

KIM LY MAHER, Softball: An outfielder on the softball team, Maher was born in Saigon and now lives in Fresno, Calif. She is 24.

LILIKO OGASAWARA, Judo: Born and raised in Englewood, N.J., the 24-year-old Ogasawara now lives in San Jose.

CLIFF SUNADA, Judo: The 25-year-old Sunada was born in Honolulu and now lives in Colorado Springs.

MARGOT THIEN, Synchronized Swimming: The 25-year-old Thien was born in San Diego and now lives in Berkeley, Calif.

YOKO ZETTERLUND, Women's Volleyball: A setter in the women's volleyball team, Zetterlund was born in San Francisco, where she lives part of the year. She also lives in San Diego. She attended a college in Waseda, Japan and is 27