After fourteen years of pain, a nation searches for shooting star’s father

The only thing he left was a grey coat, and a note to her coach Huang Yanhua, which read: “I’m going far away. I want you to treat Wenjun as your own daughter and help her do her very best”.

Guo was so distraught by his disappearance that she quit shooting twice. She became an introvert, and at one point spent a week waiting outside her former home when she heard a man resembling her father had been seen in the area, reports said. But Huang convinced her that winning an Olympic gold medal could be the best way to find him, according to the newspaper.

“I told her the Olympics is the best chance she has of finding her father,” Huang was quoted as saying. “I told her, ‘If you give up, you will disappoint your father. But if you win the gold medal, your father is likely to find you’.”

Guo responded by saying: “I’ll do well in the Games, and my dad will see me and be proud.”

After finishing a disappointing ninth at the City Games in 2005, she knuckled down and made a promising comeback, winning both a gold and a silver at the 2006 Doha Asian Games. But a year later she was ready to give up again. It was only Huang’s reminder of her ultimate motivation of finding her father that convinced her to keep going, which culminated in Sunday’s gold medal.

The story has touched the hearts of the nation with an online notice to look for her father receiving 100,000 hits so far and more than 10,000 Internet users actively participating in the search, the Beijing News said.

One of the organisers of the search told the newspaper he had succeeded in helping others find family or friends. “We hope for another success this time to show our gratitude to Guo for winning an Olympic gold medal,” the unnamed man said.