{"id":123,"date":"2011-09-12T11:22:58","date_gmt":"2011-09-12T11:22:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/?p=123"},"modified":"2011-09-12T11:22:58","modified_gmt":"2011-09-12T11:22:58","slug":"ma-jian-basketball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/2011\/09\/ma-jian-basketball\/","title":{"rendered":"Ma Jian Swaps Basketball for America’s Cup Sailing"},"content":{"rendered":"

China has a huge pool of talent from which to build an America’s Cup<\/a> team, but few of them understand sailing. The athleticism of the new format of the America’s Cup requires fit, strong crew, but teaching athletes a new sport is not easy.<\/p>\n

The new format for the cup should be an opportunity to reduce the age of sailors, but over the weekend, China Team exposed the sport to\u00a0Ma Jian, the famous Chinese ex-basketball\u00a0player who is known for playing college basketball for the University of Utah from 1993\u20131995. Ma Jian has joined China Team<\/a> to train to be one of the Chinese\u00a0sailors on the crew of the AC72 for the America\u2019s Cup\u00a0final in San Francisco in summer 2013. It was the first sailing experience for the athlete.<\/p>\n

Ma Jian, who is 42, had a reaction of amazement and surprise when he got off the boat, though one can’t imagine he would have thought it would be anything like playing with a ball on a court. Nevertheless he said:<\/p>\n

\u201cI never\u00a0realized how different this would be to basketball. I thought that\u00a0being a strong athlete would be enough, but now I realize that this\u00a0sport is a lot more complex than basketball, as the nature elements\u00a0(wind, water\u2026) are all very unpredictable and play a big role in the\u00a0strategy of sailing.<\/p>\n

Also balance, I realize that you need a lot more\u00a0balance to be a great sailor. I have a lot of work in front of me to\u00a0become a top sailor. This sport requires more than discipline, it\u00a0requires skills that most professional athletes do not have. I need\u00a0to work so hard, but I can do it.<\/p>\n

But I believe that there are many\u00a0young adults in China who would have the skills to do this, and\u00a0train and become one of the best sailors. I have a better\u00a0understanding now and I want to encourage people who believe\u00a0they can to join the team to train\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More America’s Cup News<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

China has a huge pool of talent from which to build an America’s Cup team, but few of them understand sailing. The athleticism of the new format of the America’s Cup requires fit, strong crew, but teaching athletes a new sport is not easy. The new format for the cup should be an opportunity to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[62,158,160,157,159],"class_list":["post-123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-yacht-racing-life","tag-americas-cup","tag-basketball","tag-china","tag-ma-jian","tag-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126,"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions\/126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}