Hou Bin: Your Life and Dreams Are Limitless

On February 18, Hou Bin, a three-time Paralympic champion, visited AISG’s Science Park campus to give a motivational speech as a part of the AISG Speaker Series. Hou Bin is a track and field athlete who specializes in the high jump, taking home the gold medal in the 1996 Atlanta Paralympics, 2000 Sydney Paralympics, and 2004 Athens Paralympics.

Hou Bin was born in Jiamusi City of Heilongjiang Province on March 15, 1975. Since childhood, he had developed a great liking for sports. But at the age of 9, an accident caused him to lose his entire left leg. After that accident, Hou Bin began to feel like an anomaly when compared to his peers, he began to lose the optimism he once had as a child.

Hou Bin’s despondencies lasted until one day, when he saw a national Paralympic game in Guangzhou playing on the TV in the welfare factory he was working in. He was motivated by the athletes on the screen, with disabilities and stories he could relate to, creating the history on the podiums he could only dream of standing on. He told his coworkers that he also wanted to be on the TV, with medals around his neck, but his coworkers only mocked him, saying that “the people on TV are professional athletes, we are just workers.”

He did not let the mockery deter him. To chase his dream, Hou Bin used scrap metal poles and heavy disks of rolled-up materials to construct makeshift barbells. He began using these barbells when he had free time. During this period of self-guided training, Hou Bin also visited various coaches in local sports schools, hoping that they would professionally coach him. After being denied six times in a span of five months, he was finally accepted for professional training in 1992.

“To be honest, I think he was pretty arrogant,” said a student who wishes to remain anonymous, “I wish he could focus more on inspiring instead of boasting in front of us.”

In 1994, Hou Bin went to his first-ever regional high jump competition in Shenzhen, where he jumped 1.55 meters high. During this period, everyone in his field set their goals to jump over 1.8 meters, which at that time was the world record for the Paralympic high jump. For Hou Bin, he did not set the goal everyone else limited themselves at, so he fixed a clear-cut dream: jump over 2 meters. His seemingly unapproachable dream was nearly achieved, as proven in the 1996 Atlanta Paralympics- where he jumped an amazing 1.92 meters. Whereas the silver medalist only jumped 1.79 meters.

“He dreamt big,” said Ross V., a freshman in AISG, “he is a great example of why with a dream, limits don’t exist.”

In 2008, where over 90,000 spectators were watching, he used a little over three minutes to climb up 39 meters with his bare hands to light the cauldron for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Paralympics. From there, he went on to give over 1,800 inspiring speeches internationally and was even the first Chinese speaker at the United Nations Youth Assembly.

As of now, he was the first IPC (International Paralympic Committee) ambassador to be a torchbearer at an Olympics opening ceremony, having carried the torch in the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Hou Bin once said: “Pursue the limitless dream instead of pursuing the limited goal.”