Chinese champion fencer looks to help next generation

BUENOS AIRES - As an Olympic champion fencer, Lei Sheng of China is accustomed to showing no fear when opponents come charging at him armed with a weapon.

The 34-year-old retired from competition a year after he competed at his third and final Olympic Games in Rio in 2016. Lei has embraced the move from the piste to the coach's box to help 17-year-old Fu Yingying qualify for the Buenos Aires 2018 Youth Olympic Games.

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

"I like coaching better," he said. "I like being a coach because it needs more thinking and that's interesting for me." Lei particularly enjoys the challenge of helping athletes mentally prepare for competition. "Before, I used to struggle by myself when I thought about how to compete and win," he said. "Now I have to prepare my athlete for that. Maybe they don't understand what I mean sometimes but I know how to help them."

The Olympian 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."

Another change Lei hopes to introduce to the Chinese foil team is a balance between competing and training. "Before, we concentrated a lot on training and not competing. We had a lot of training experience but not competition experience," he said. "I want to change that so my younger athletes will have more experience for the competition in the future."