Wang Yan raises her right arm in greeting on Wednesday at the Shanghai No. 6 People's Hospital. The gymnast, who broke her neck and became paralyzed during the national titles in the city last month, has been moved out of intensive care into an ordinary ward but faces a long recovery.

Wang Yan raises her right arm in greeting on Wednesday at the Shanghai No. 6 People's Hospital. The gymnast, who broke her neck and became paralyzed during the national titles in the city last month, has been moved out of intensive care into an ordinary ward but faces a long recovery.[Shanghai Daily]

Wang Yan, the 15-year gymnast who broke her neck and became paralyzed during the national championships in the city last month, is off the critical list.

She on Wednesday began six hours of daily rehabilitation and hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

She was moved out of the intensive care unit to an ordinary ward on Tuesday night, said officials from the Shanghai No. 6 People's Hospital.

"The rehabilitation consists of training in respiratory function, muscle power, ankle mobility, turnovers, sitting, standing and walking and psychological direction," said Tan Shensheng, vice president of the hospital.

"This period of rehabilitation will last for three months.

"We can't estimate how much better she will get, nor the duration of her recovery time, but she has managed to conquer the most dangerous period."

Doctors said Wang can now breathe unassisted and has regained the ability to urinate and defecate.

However, while she has regained partial movement on the left side, her right side remains paralyzed.

Wang, a member of the Zhejiang Provincial team, became comatose at the seventh National Gymnastics Championship on June 10 after landing head-first on the mat after her dismount from the uneven bars. Her second and third vertebrae were fractured.

When she arrived at the hospital, she had lost all feeling below the chest and had lost control of her bodily waste functions.

Doctors gave immediate and wide-ranging treatment, with first emphasis on her breathing as 98.5 percent of patients with similar spinal injuries can die of respiratory failure.

Surgery was conducted on June 19 to repair the fractures.

Wang is not the first Chinese gymnast to suffer from crippling injuries during competition.

Sang Lan, a former member of the national women's gymnastic team, suffered spinal injuries at the Goodwill Games in Long Island, New York, in 1998 and has been wheelchair-bound sinc