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As a 15 year old Singaporean attending Yew Chung International School of Beijing, I was thrilled to learn about the Lenovo plan to choose eight foreigners as Olympic Torchbearers. I can’t imagine a greater honour than being a torchbearer at the greatest sporting competition in the world.For a young athlete like me, the Olympic Games represent everything that I love about competitive sports and, in particular, my sport of figure skating. I love that I can train in Beijing with Chinese coaches even though I am from another part of the world. I love that I can meet and make friends with people from other cultures and countries. I love the Olympic values of fair play and friendly competition. As long as I train hard, I have just as good a chance as any other athlete. Of course, sacrifices have to be made if a young athlete wants to be able to represent their country at the Olympic Games some day. I have to say that I work through both sweat and tears. I train six days a week, and I have suffered thousands of falls on the ice as I have learned harder jumps. I have trained in Beijing since 2000, and I return to Singapore once a year to compete at our National Figure Skating Championships. For the past two years, I have been fortunate to have become my country’s National Champion in figure skating. However, over the years, I have won, and I have lost—and I must say that I have learned as much from losing as I have from winning. If there is one thing I have learned from falling on the ice in practice, it is not to be defeated by my ‘failures’ along the way. It has been my experience that people often cheer for the champion but ignore the athletes who were second or third or fourth. However, in my opinion, this is not the true Olympic way. Everyone’s efforts should be applauded and respected for the incredible work that we put in to get there. Even though we are only teenagers (or younger!), we all have dreams of representing our country at the Olympic Games. Even though we are young, we share the Olympic dream, the values of fair play and the importance of learning from the journey. Therefore I would like to bear the Olympic torch as a symbol of my salute to everyone who strives hard no matter what, whether they get a chance to compete at the Olympics or not. The Olympic Torch symbolises their willpower and commitment to their chosen sport. The Torch lights the way to personal best achievements, National records and maybe even a chance to compete at the greatest Games in the world—The Olympics. It would be my great honour to be chosen as torchbearer for the Beijing Olympic Games.
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