Xu Yuan Zhen


Xu Yuan Zhen is a Singaporean former sailor, who specialized in the two-person dinghy class. Together with his partner Terence Koh, he was named one of the country's top sailors in the double-handed dinghy for the 2008 Summer Olympics, finishing in a distant twenty-second place. Outside his Olympic career, he and Koh gave the Singaporeans a sterling silver medal in the men's 470 at the 2006 Asian Games in Doha, Qatar. A member of the Singapore Sailing Federation, Xu trained for the Games under the tutelage of Australian-born head coach Craig Ferris.
Xu competed for the Singaporean sailing squad, as a skipper in the men's 470 class, at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. He and crew member Koh topped the selection criteria in a three-way battle with the quota recipients Roy Tay and Chung Peiming, and Teo Wee Chin and Benjamin Tan to lock the country's berth, based on their cumulative scores attained at three international regattas stipulated by the Singapore Sailing Federation. Stranded in the middle of a vast 29-boat fleet at the very start, the Singaporean duo held off a late charge from behind to attain a top-ten mark on the seventh leg of the series. Another wave of substantial outcomes towards the final stretch, however, diminished the Singaporeans' prospect to enter the medal round, sitting them in twenty-second overall with 159 net points.