The 141-kilogram barbell lay silently on the floor at the Tokyo International Forum. Kuo Hsing-chun stepped lightly over, slowly taking position in front of it, squatted down, and grasped the barbell.

She had already lifted 103 kilograms in the snatch, and 133 kilograms in the clean and jerk to total 236 kilograms, setting a new combined Olympic record. Well on her way to the gold medal, Kuo flexed her muscles, squatted down, and lifted the barbell to her chest with all her might.

After taking a breath, Kuo began lifting the weights higher. As she did, she lost her form, and as her balance fell apart the barbell came crashing to the floor.

She fell backwards, but she wore an elegant smile on her face. She had already won. Despite the fall, she had already become the pride of Taiwan.

“I fell in love with weightlifting when somebody told me that I look like I’m dancing when I lift,” said Kuo, back in Taiwan fresh from Tokyo.

Kuo got her wish at this year’s Tokyo Olympics, putting the final golden piece in her career puzzle. Thinking back to how she came back from past injuries, she could not keep her tears at bay. “I would like to say thanks to the injured Kuo Hsing-chun of 2014 for never giving up. There have been so many injuries, so much pain along the road, and she always showed everyone a happy demeanor. So I want to thank you for letting me decimate this body,” said an emotional Kuo.

‘Survivor’ Hsing-chun, daughter of a single Amis mother

Kuo has been dubbed “the goddess of weightlifting”. Yet when she was younger, she had no desire to practice weightlifting, and it was only due to getting strong-armed by a coach that she got her start. “The coach was really strict, and made us practice what he preached.” And that is indeed the way it was.

Born into a poor family, Kuo’s parents split up around the time of her birth. As her mother was often away trying to make ends meet, the little Amis girl, underweight and nearly strangled by the umbilical cord at birth, was raised in Taitung by her maternal grandmother.

Kuo had to endure her family’s home being auctioned off for failure to pay the mortgage. She lived on work sites, and moved from home to home of different relatives. Throughout that time, sports was the only center of gravity in her life.

(Source: Getty Images)

Kuo liked to go running with classmates after class. Everyone is equal on the track, and once the gun goes off it is purely a battle of physical strength. “I’m grateful for my love of sports, so that I could focus fully on training, and not feel like my family was indigent,” she recalls.

Once in middle school, Kuo joined the basketball team and the track and field team, impressing the coach with her explosiveness and jumping ability. This led him to introduce her to weightlifting coach Lin Ching-neng. “She had speed, muscular strength, good coordination, and agility - all the marks of a top athlete,” relates Coach Lin.

More importantly, Lin Ching-neng recognized the advantages that Kuo’s height of 1.55 meters gave her. For starters, her petite stature allowed her to expend less strength to lift a barbell over her head from the floor.

Still, demanding that a blossoming adolescent girl train to lift weights was nothing short of cruel, and the teenaged Kuo’s method of rebellion was avoidance. “I didn’t even want to go to school.”

But she ultimately relented. “I couldn’t take it just sitting around at home,” she recalls. And after engaging in a cold war with her coach, the coach agreed to let her go back to the track team - on the condition that she also practice weightlifting.

As fate would have it, as a middle school junior competing in the national scholastic championships, Kuo dropped the baton in the 4x100-meter relay, costing her team the chance to advance. She hid in the bathroom crying.

(Source: Lin Ching-neng)

But she still had another competition that day: weightlifting. And with the encouragement of her teachers and classmates, her eyes still swollen from crying, she showed up for the weightlifting event and won a medal, even though she had only been training for a few months.

Kuo moved into the National Sports Training Center in April of 2011, marking the formal beginning of her career as an athlete. The first day there, coach Lin Ching-neng told her, “Our goal is an Olympic gold medal.” Yet Kuo was thinking to herself: “That’s your goal, not mine.”

Kuo had always been an athlete out of pure enjoyment of sport, and even though she lifted a combined 223 kilograms the next year and qualified to represent her country at the 2012 London Olympics, she was still unable to find meaning in weightlifting. She just trained as prescribed, meeting goal after goal set out by her coach.

In 2013, Kuo took successive gold medals at the Asian Weightlifting Championships, Taipei Universiade, East Asia Games, and World Weightlifting Championships, slowly finding joy in winning medals.

One commenter below a video of Kuo in competition wrote: “When she lifts, her movements and technique look like she’s dancing with the barbell.” Accolades such as this gave Kuo a sense of accomplishment. “It turns out my magic is to lift heavy weights gracefully.” This turned her view of weightlifting around, from resistance and distaste to a genuine love for it, ultimately leading her to declare that “I want to turn everyone’s image of weightlifting on its head.”

Muscle tear in leg, fears of never standing again

Yet the life of a professional athlete is like walking a tightrope - the moment you relax you can fall.

“It was May 12, 2014,” Lin Ching-neng recalls clearly. Having finally made an impression in international competitions, and widely tapped as the gold medal favorite heading into the upcoming Asian Games in Incheon, Korea, that day she was in full battle training mode. But things went horribly wrong during an attempt to lift 141 kilograms in the clean and jerk.

The barbell crushed Kuo’s right thigh with great force, causing a 70-percent tear. “I lay on the ground crying my eyes out,” she recalls.

During her down time from the injury, Lin pushed Kuo in a wheelchair everywhere seeking medical help, including weekly visits to Taipei for treatment. The road to recovery was painful and arduous, and Kuo cried in bed many nights. She relied on playing the piano and reading as therapy during this time, even purchasing a piano to place in the National Training Center.

Four months after her injury, Kuo appeared on the competitive stage of the Asian Games. And while her 219-kilogram combined score was only enough for fourth place, it was still a veritable miracle.

Appearing in her second Olympic Games in London 2012, Kuo had to settle for a bronze medal. “I was so fixated on the gold medal that I forgot to think about what I was doing,” she said after the competition. “I’m very disappointed with my performance, and so sorry for my coach,” she added.

Upon her return to Taiwan, she trained hard with older classmate Hung Wan-ting, guaranteeing that as a representative of the host nation she would take gold at the 2017 Universiade in Taipei.

Attempting to lift 142 kilograms in the clean and jerk at the 2017 Taipei Universiade, the moment the barbell cleared her head, Kuo’s eyes filled with tears of joy. Surpassing the world record, that effort also lifted Kuo out of her doldrums.

A long way off from the young girl who detested weightlifting, now she likes to say, “I’m so lucky that weightlifting chose me.” Because she knows that, whether in competition or in life, “the person you must measure yourself against is always yourself.”

(Source: Kuo Hsing-chun)

Back in Taiwan following the Tokyo Olympics, Kuo has started preparing for next year’s Asian Games in Hangzhou and looking ahead to the Paris Olympics in 2024. She will keep elegantly dancing with barbells into the future.

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Translated by David Toman
Edited by TC Lin
Uploaded by Jane Chen