Yip's pals reveal a swimmer fearless and focused

She can't grip the weight bar, her fingers can't do it, her condition won't allow it, but so what? Only her muscles have weakened, not her resolve. So a black strap is affixed to her wrists and then attached to the bar. Then Yip Pin Xiu pushes the weights. Somehow she finds a way to get better.

"She's not fragile," says Andrew Tay, the strength and conditioning coach from the Singapore Sport Institute. He should know. For over three years he's taken Yip - currently competing in Tokyo - through shoulder presses, dips, medicine ball throws and planks.