The Dream Gymnast : Li Xiao Ping, Titans’ Star Athlete From China, Has Coach Fantasizing About Success

Dick Wolfe has this fantasy. It involves his Cal State Fullerton men’s gymnastics team and its meet against UCLA on Jan. 30. And, get this. It involves a capacity crowd in Titan Gym to watch.

“That’s my goal,” Wolfe was saying just the other day. “We’re going to have 4,000 people in there. We’re going fill that sucker.”

They would be there, so this fantasy goes, to see Fullerton meet an NCAA power and to see the Titans’ newest drawing card. He’s a sports hero in China and an internationally known star in gymnastics circles. He’s Wolfe’s Shanghai Surprise.

His name is Li Xiao Ping, and he is the reason Wolfe will forever believe that fantasies can come true.

Earlier this week, it was announced that Li, a member of the Chinese national team that won the silver medal in the 1984 Olympics, had enrolled at Fullerton, where he will become the first Chinese gymnast to compete for an American university.

Wolfe went through a long process of correspondence with Chinese officials and meetings with Fullerton administrators, and said he still didn’t believe Li was coming to Fullerton until he saw him step off the plane at Los Angeles International Airport. Li married Weng Gia, a former member of the Chinese women’s national team and current assistant coach, in August and left for Fullerton shortly thereafter.

Understandably, Wolfe is like a kid who got a new pommel pony for Christmas and can hardly wait to show it off. Li, who turned 24 in September, will be eligible to compete for only one season because of NCAA age rules, but will then serve as an assistant to Wolfe while completing his degree at Fullerton.

“His presence in the gym has caused everyone else to step up a wrung,” Wolfe said. “Now, they’re training in the presence of a world champion. Before they got to know him, he had an almost god-like stature to them.”

Language barriers aside, Li Xiao Ping isn’t so difficult to get to know. In an informal press conference Wednesday, Li came across as a polite and friendly young man, eager to learn English and not at all intimidated by the attention he has generated.

Through interpreter Lan Wang, the Fullerton graduate student who last February casually asked Wolfe if he would give a scholarship to a Chinese gymnast in search of an American education, Li said that he came to Fullerton to pursue an education and plans to return to China once that education is complete. He said the Chinese government supports his stay.

“It was difficult to leave home and my teammates, coaches and family,” Li said. “I miss them very much. (But) my purpose to come here is to study physical education.”

An ankle injury prompted Li to retire from the Chinese national team after seven years. In that time, he had built quite a reputation in China. Wang, who, like Li, is a native of Shanghai, said: “Everyone worshiped him, including me. I was very excited about writing to him.”

Such reactions explain why Li was at ease with American reporters and photographers. The attention is nothing new; it’s only coming in a different language. And Li is working on speaking that language.

Eli Rodriguez, Li’s teammate, roommate and the person who drives him to his tutoring sessions, said: “Actually, he’s getting better. At first, we used a lot of sign language and drawing pictures. But he studies a lot and he’s catching on quickly.

“For his birthday, we took him to Disneyland. He was really impressed with that. The other day, I had to sit down with him and explain what Halloween was. He saw a commercial on TV with kids in costumes and he said, ‘What’s that?’ It took me about half an hour to explain.”

Communication is easier in the gym, where Li’s actions speak for themselves. He was the 1981 world champion on the pommel horse and has received scores of 10 in that event five times in international competition. He will compete on the pommel horse, horizontal bar, rings and parallel bars for the Titans.

He was asked if his approach to gymnastics will change now that he’s no longer in the high-pressure international arena. His answer delighted Wolfe.

“In gymnastics, the actions are the same all over the world, whether you’re in an international competition or at the college level,” Li said.

It will be interesting to see how Li will be judged. His new coach and teammates are already flashing him 10’s.

“He’s done what every gymnast has dreamed about doing,” Rodriguez said. “He’s been an Olympian and a world champion. There’s really nothing left for him to prove. But he’s here for an education, and to help us as a team. Everybody on the team really respects him for that.”

Wolfe, who’s hoping to realize still another fantasy, said: “We have a lot of talent in the gym that nobody knows about. Now, we’ve got our star, and we’re going to try to put all this talent together and try to make some magic in Division I gymnastics.”