From not keeping up to head of the pack

Editor's Note: Lu Guowei is shy and has problems speaking comfortably with strangers, so this story is built on interviews conducted with those closest to him.

"He is 21 years old but probably only has the intelligence of an 11-year-old child," said Lu Guoqiang, 23, referring to his younger brother Lu Guowei.

But this "child" won three medals in sprint running — one gold and two silver — in the 2023 Special Olympics World Summer Games, held in Berlin, Germany, from June 17 to 25.

The very next day, when Lu Guowei returned from Germany to his home in Yanshan, a small county in Southwest China's Yunnan province, he went to Yanshan Special Education School to see his former teachers, proudly wearing three of the medals he won at the Special Olympics, even though he already graduated from the school five years ago.

"All the students looked at him as if he was a hero, an icon," said Yang Jiaguo, a PE teacher at the school, adding that he himself was overwhelmed by excitement and pride. It was Yang who discovered Lu Guowei's talent in sprint running and led him onto this path in the first place.

Yang had no idea that this path would take Lu Guowei so far. After all, Lu Guowei's grandma first sent him to the school in 2013 just so that he had somewhere to go to after he dropped out of his previous school — a regular school — when both his family and teachers realized he was too slow to keep up. In fact, according to Lu Guoqiang, when they were younger, their mother left the family for the same reason — seeing the intellectually disabled Lu Guowei as a burden.

At the school, Yang introduced Lu Guowei to basketball. He noticed that Lu Guowei had excellent physical coordination, explosive power and jumping ability, which then led him to encourage Lu Guowei to try sprint running.

But what makes it hard is that Lu Guowei — like other intellectually disabled kids — has problems understanding even the simplest concepts and instructions, especially when he was younger. Yang remembered when Lu Guowei first started sprint training, he couldn't understand why each runner had to stay within one lane and shouldn't cut into someone else's.