``I am sure she will be back to the competition circle because she is a very courageous girl,'' her father, Sang Shisheng, told a news conference through an interpreter, ``and with the excellent medical (care), the doctors and hospitals in America, I am sure she will one day be back to the contest.''``When I first saw my daughter lying on the sickbed, my heart was so hurt that she looked at me and said, mother, don't worry about me because the doctor here and the medicine here is very, very good,'' Chen Xiufeng said.``You have to have confidence. You have to have courage to allow me to recover,'' she quoted her daughter as saying.

The team visited the 17-year-old before returning to China. ``Many of them could not hold themselves andcried,'' said Sang.

Her father said: "But Sang did not have even one drop of tear. Rather, she asked her fellow gymnasts how they fared. She also asked her coach why she (Sang) failed, this time?"

Sang had seven hours of surgery on Saturday to fuse two fractured and dislocated vertebrae in her neck. The operation was intended to stabilise Sang's spine and enable her to sit up. She was started on sygen, an experimental drug that might help repair nerve damage, on Thursday.

Sang, China's national women's vault champion, was hurt on today last after she crashed during a warm-up vault before her Goodwill Games event, losing movement in her legs, feeling from her mid-chest down, and virtually all use of her arms.

Meanwhile Sang's long road to rehabilitation started yesterday amid cards and gifts from as far away as Hong Kong and Venezuela.

Doctors said that the 17-year-old was showing modest signs of recovery.