Competition to get through dark times
Shen was born profoundly deaf in one ear and with a moderate hearing impairment in the other, and only said “Mama” for the first time when she was three years old. She found that even with a hearing aid she often couldn’t hear clearly, and sounds became distorted. Worried that others would look down on her, she became highly introverted and was very shy about speaking.
When she was in fifth grade, her mother, who had been an athlete in the Taiwan Area Games, encouraged her to join the badminton team at Shih-Hu Elementary School in Kaohsiung.
Shen’s mother, Wang Mei-ching, says that initially she wasn’t expecting her daughter to win championships, but simply hoped that sports would help her to interact more with other people. In junior high school Shen entered a sports-oriented curriculum track, but it turned out that when playing badminton, because she couldn’t hear the sound of the other player’s racket hitting the shuttlecock, she would only move her feet when she saw the shuttlecock coming, so that she was always slow off the mark. Though Wang worried about this, she didn’t know what she could do to help.
But Shen found that she could focus better on the action when playing without her hearing aid. With determination and resilience, she concentrated on her footwork and gradually worked out a multifaceted approach to playing.
In 2012, Shen represented Taiwan at the Asia Pacific Deaf Games in Seoul. She says: “I realized that I could represent hearing-impaired athletes by competing abroad, and that in this way I could do my bit for my country by playing badminton.” This sense of honor became her motivation to carry on competing.
In 2015, Shen represented deaf athletes from Taiwan when she competed in Bulgaria at the 1st World Youth Deaf Badminton Championships and the 4th World Deaf Badminton Championships.
In over a month of competition, Shen played in women’s singles, women’s doubles, mixed doubles, and team events. She played an average of four to five matches a day, and over the course of the two championships, each lasting about two weeks, she played more than 100 matches in all. “During these events I didn’t think about anything else. The more I played, the more focused I got. I played and played until sometimes I even forgot who my opponent was.” Shen laughs as she relates the story.
Shen, who stayed dialed in right through the final shot, won two gold medals for women’s singles in these international tournaments, setting a new milestone by becoming the first person on the Chinese Taipei deaf badminton team to win two gold medals. “It was at these contests that I became aware that I could achieve at such a high level.” For Shen, who was playing in her first world championships, the event helped her get through a dark time and gave her a professional goal to continue to train for.
Shen Yan-ru and Paralympic badminton player Fan Jen-yu analyze each other’s skills following a practice match.