Lei coaching on the cutting edge

As an Olympic champion fencer, China's Lei Sheng is accustomed to showing no fear when opponents come charging at him with a rapier.

Since retiring from competition a year after he capped his third Olympic Games with a gold medal in Rio in 2016, the 34-year-old Lei has demonstrated the same resolve in taking up coaching and helping 17-year-old Fu Yingying qualify for the Youth Olympics, which wrap up this week in Buenos Aires.

After a decorated career that includes three World Cup titles and top-three finishes across world and regional championships, Lei is reveling in his new role.

"I like coaching better than competing," he said. "I like being a coach because it requires more thinking, and that's interesting for me.

"Before, I used to struggle by myself when I thought about how to compete and win. Now I have to prepare my athletes for that. Maybe they don't understand what I mean sometimes, but I know how to help them."

Lei is also confident the growing trend of training men and women together as one team, instead of separate squads, will improve their competitiveness.

"Training together helps young athletes and women. Men are stronger when they train with other men, so men training with women helps women improve," he said.

Another adjustment Lei hopes to introduce to the Chinese foil team is a better balance between competing and training.

"Before, we concentrated a lot on training and not competing. We had a lot of training experience, but not much competition experience," he said.

"I want to change that so my younger athletes will have more competitive experience in the future."

Xinhua