Wang Meng, the king of Chinese short track speed skating, has three in and three out of the national

Mondo Sports Updated on 2024-01-28

When I first met her, I was fascinated by her beauty.

Wang Meng was born in 1984 in his hometown of Qitaihe, Heilongjiang Province, where his father, Wang Chunjiang, was a coal miner, and his mother, Zhang Xiaoxia, worked in the courts. He was born into an ordinary working-class family.

Like many of his peers, Wang Meng had a happy childhood after he was born in this era. After school, he always plays with his friends and has a big personality, just like a boy.

It wasn't until 1993 that Wang Meng started short track speed skating when she was 9 years old, and she often played the role of "big sister" when playing with her friends.

Young coach Ma Qingzhong began the first athlete selection of his coaching career in the spring, when the city of Qitaihe was divided into a new city and an old city, with the new city located on the hill and the old town at the bottom of the mountain.

Although the old coaches advised Ma Qingzhong not to go to the mountains of Xincheng District to select players, he resolutely decided to go, and Wang Meng happened to be a student at the Xincheng District Mining Bureau Primary School.

Ma Qingzhong only selected Wang Meng at the Mining Bureau Primary School, and when she first joined the team, she only received ground training, and because of her young age, the coach did not arrange for her to do weight-bearing strength training.

However, as she watched her teammates, who were a few years older than herself, training with full attention, she was filled with anxiety and worry, and she was afraid that she would be left behind. One day, when Ma Qingzhong was not present, Wang Meng secretly came to the barbell and tried to imitate his teammates who put the barbell plate on the back of his neck for leg kick-up strength training.

Wang Meng, who was not yet 9 years old at the time, could not hold a 10-kilogram barbell plate with her small arms. She tried her best to pick up the top piece of the stack of barbell pieces, but at that moment, the barbell slipped down and smashed on Wang Meng's index finger. When she took her fingers out, her nails were almost falling off and blood was flowing.

After the teammates immediately found out about the situation, they immediately notified Coach Ma Qingzhong. At the same time, the sports school also notified Wang Meng's father, Wang Chunjiang. Subsequently, the two hurriedly sent Wang Meng to a nearby maternal and child health station for bandaging.

Wang Meng cried very sadly along the way, and his snot flowed. However, after the bandage, he immediately stopped crying, and instead began to comfort his father and Coach Ma Qingzhong: "I'm fine, you don't have to worry." The doctor said that I was still young, and I would be able to grow well in the future."

A **-year-old child, if his fingernails fall off, it will definitely hurt very much, but Wang Meng only rested for two or three days, and insisted on practicing leg and technical training Xi, holding his injured little hand.

Wang Meng went through 7 months of solid land training, from March to July, which made her show her ice sense and technique beyond her age level as soon as she took to the ice.

Every member of the team who Xi speed skating has to endure the pain of repeated wear and tear of their feet when they first put on their skates, without exception.

Some players would run up to the coach and complain about sore feet, saying they didn't want to continue trainingOthers complain of pain while Xi during training. However, Wang Meng, the youngest member of the team, never expressed a complaint of pain.

When I first started skating, the upper of the skate skate was very stiff, which caused the team members to wear and tear their ankles. Once, coach Ma Qingzhong observed some deformation in Wang Meng's technical movements, and he kept skating with a painful expression on his face as he skated, but he didn't say a word.

Ma Qingzhong noticed that the players were behaving strangely on the field, so he asked, "Mengmeng, what's wrong with you?"”

When Wang Meng heard the coach's inquiry, he still claimed that he was fine and wanted to continue training. Ma Qingzhong immediately told her to stop and walked to the sidelines, only to find that the scabbed wound on her ankle had been worn back on, revealing flesh and oozing blood.

Sometimes when I go back to the house, I forget to take off my socks and fall asleep in bed. When he woke up, he found that the socks and the worn places on his feet were glued together, and the pain when he took off the socks made Wang Meng unforgettable for the rest of his life.

Wang Meng and his teammates had a very hard time training at the Qitaihe Amateur Sports School, their living environment was very harsh, and the food and housing conditions were very poor. The team members live in a house in the old neighborhood that is about to collapse, and there is no heating in the house, so they can only use earthen stoves for heating.

Ma Qingzhong and his children plugged the frozen cracks on the walls of the house with cotton and rags, and then repaired the cracks in the walls with cement mixed with egg whites.

In order to keep the children, because of the difficult environment, the team only got 130 yuan a month at that time, and even so, a third of the team members were still unable to pay.

Therefore, the quality of the meals in the sports school is not satisfactory. Coach Ma Qingzhong always eats a little casually when the players finish eating the rest. Wang Meng often finds this situation, and she will give her bowl of rice to the coach. Most importantly, she didn't do it to please the coach, but out of genuine concern for the coach.

Wang Meng is not only naughty in the team, she is always in front, no matter what she does. At that time, her family conditions were the best among the team, and every time her parents brought her food, she was never stingy and always shared the food with her teammates.

Due to personality reasons, Wang Meng prefers to play with boys in the team, and she is not afraid of being tired or dirty. At that time, the ice rink was all outside, and in the spring, the boys had to get up in the middle of the night to pour the ice, and the girls were responsible for delivering food to the boys.

Wang Meng watered the ice with the boys every time, and the whole process took at least two hours. Then I had a meal, a short rest, and I started training in the early hours of the morning, because as soon as the sun came out, the ice couldn't slide, and this was usually around 9 am.

At that time, Wang Meng and the rest of the team lived in a dormitory without toilets, so they had to go to the dry toilet outside. In winter, Wang Meng and the boys were responsible for cleaning the toilet, and some boys couldn't afford these dirty and tiring jobs, but Wang Meng took care of it all.

Many interesting things happened to Wang Meng at the Qitaihe City Amateur Sports School, where the boys and girls in the team lived in the opposite building, and she hung her rag dolls on the windows. Unexpectedly, a male team member who came out to the toilet in the middle of the night was scared and fainted. Luckily, the male team members recovered quickly after being found and helped. The next day, when Wang Meng learned about it, she felt both apologetic and couldn't help laughing.

In 1998, Wang Meng began her career as a professional athlete at the Heilongjiang Provincial Sports School, studying under Coach Fan Hongwen. In Coach Fan's view, Wang Meng's technical advantages are obvious, just like the industry says "slippery feet", but her physical fitness is a little lacking.

As an adolescent, 13-year-old Wang Meng began to notice that her body had become bloated and her movements on the ice had become clumsy. So she found Coach Fan and said that she wanted to ** by not eating or drinking.

Coach Fan immediately opened his mouth to persuade, put forward a reasonable method, and encouraged Wang Meng to firmly believe that "I want to practice", so that she could understand the meaning of skating from the ideological level.

On Teacher's Day in 1998, Coach Fan took the players to the hotel for dinner. Wang Meng planned a surprise and invited the players to give Coach Fan a huge flower basket and a double-tiered cake with "Happy Birthday" written on it. This moved Coach Fan to the point of tears, and that night, the players drank drinks while Coach Fan drank alone, and ended up getting drunk.

Wang Meng, who was only 16 years old, competed in the same group as Da Yang Yang and Xiao Yang Yang when he participated in the short track speed skating 1500m final of the Ninth National Games in 2000. Despite his young age, Wang Meng eventually won the bronze medal.

Wang Meng made her debut at the World Junior Championships in 2002 and won the women's 500m, becoming the first Chinese athlete in history to win the event. She also finished second in the all-around event and third place in the 1500m event.

In 2003, Wang Meng reached the 500m final in her first World Championships, but unfortunately she accidentally fell at the start. However, it is gratifying that in the 3000m final, Wang Meng won the championship with teammates Yang Yang, Wang Chunlu and Fu Tianyu.

In 2004, Wang Meng performed well in the World Cup, winning the 500m championship in the Netherlands, Italy, South Korea and Hangzhou. At the 10th Games, she not only won the gold medal in the 500-meter short track speed skating, but also won the first place in the women's all-around.

Wang Meng is the best player with the strongest overall ability, which is the consensus of Xin Qingshan, the head coach of the Chinese short track speed skating team, and Coach Yi Min, who took over later, who believes that Wang Meng has great potential.

When Wang Meng was first selected for the national team, he was expelled once for spending tens of thousands of yuan to entertain the players. However, he had not yet become famous at the time, and the incident did not attract much attention. It is worth mentioning.

Wang Meng competed at the 20th Winter Olympics in Turin in February 2006, where she won the gold medal in the women's 500m short track speed skating with a time of 44.345 seconds.

In 2007, at the Asian Winter Games in Changchun, Wang Meng, a first-class star in China's ice skating industry, publicly criticized the new Chinese short track speed skating head coach Li Yan. What's even more surprising is that when Wang Meng crossed the finish line after winning the championship, he didn't high-five Li Yan who was standing on the sidelines to celebrate, and the cold attitude between the two became the focus of attention.

At that time, no one in the team dared to mess with Wang Meng, and if she didn't participate in the training, the whole team would lack a training atmosphere. And Li Yan had just returned from abroad and adopted a new training method, which led to a sudden increase in training intensity, which aroused Wang Meng's suspicions.

Because of the strong personalities of the two and the lack of full communication, the contradiction between the master and apprentice continued to intensify, and finally broke out at the Asian Winter Games, and Li Yan announced that Wang Meng would be expelled from the national team in a fit of anger.

After Wang Meng and Li Yan calmed down, they understood that in fact, the goal of the two is the same, that is, to win the championship in the Winter Olympics. Considering Wang Meng's strength at that time, expelling her from the national team was a loss for the national team;And if Wang Meng is not in the national team, she may not be able to participate in the World Series.

As a result, the two of them were reconciled. In 2008, Li Yan reappointed Wang Meng as captain of the national team, and at the Qiqihar Winter Games held in the same year, Wang Meng won seven consecutive gold medals in short track speed skating.

Wang Meng created miracles one after another at the end of the year, becoming the world's first person in the women's 500m short track speed skating, opening the "Meng Era", and it was Li Yan who pushed her to take off.

In 2009, Wang Meng won three championships in the women's 500m, 1000m and all-around events at the World Championships, and helped the Chinese team win the 3000m relay championship. Subsequently, in the team championship, Wang Meng led the team to successfully win the championship and achieved a high score of 46 points.

At the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Wang Meng broke the Olympic record twice in the preliminaries and semi-finals of the 500m event, and finally successfully defended his title in the final.

Wang Meng kowtowed to Li Yan after winning the championship, and the relationship between the master and apprentice was reconciled again.

Wang Meng won the women's 1000m and 3000m relay events despite a severe cold, becoming the first Chinese athlete in the history of short track speed skating to achieve the feat of triple crown. She also became the first Chinese athlete to win three gold medals in one Olympic Games after Li Ning and Zou Kai.

Wang Meng's performance is outstanding, but her reputation is not based solely on results. In July 2011, Wang Meng had a fierce clash with other team members against national team leader Wang Chunlu and assistant coaches.

The reason for this incident was that on the evening of July 24, the team leader and assistant coach found that Wang Meng and several other team members were not in the dormitory during their inspection, and then contacted Wang Meng. He explained to the team leader: "My parents happened to be in Qingdao, and I brought a few team members to drink with my parents, and they had a very good time. I hope the tour leader can be considerate and don't worry about us not returning to the dormitory on time. ”

The team leader and assistant coach waited until 11 p.m. until Wang Meng and several team members returned to the hotel drunk. After meeting the team leader, they felt that she had ruined the atmosphere of the party by beating herself, and thought that doing so did not give her face.

They then engaged in a heated confrontation, instructing the rest of the team to join in beating the team leader and assistant coach, and even pulling out knives to injure them, and the scuffle lasted for nearly two hours.

The others immediately moved the team leader and other injured people to the hotel room after they were discovered, but Wang Meng and others were still angry, and they searched the various rooms of the hotel, searched for people, kicked the door, smashed the TV, and destroyed the hotel facilities to vent their emotions.

The reason why Wang Meng was very dissatisfied was that during the incident, some team members did not listen to her instructions and participated in it. As a result, she then self-harmed by striking the walls and glass with her hands, resulting in injuries to her own hands.

After this incident occurred, it caused a strong response, and the General Administration of Sports and the Winter Management Center quickly found out the cause of the incident and dealt with it accordingly.

Wang Meng and Liu Xianwei were expelled from the national team, demanded compensation for damaged public goods, and disqualified them from participating in international and domestic competitions.

It wasn't until 2012 that Wang Meng was able to make an official comeback. On her comeback a little over a year later, she is still the champion of the women's 500m, winning the women's 500m at six stops at the 2012-2013 Short Track Speed Skating World Cup in two consecutive seasons.

In 2012, with only 22 days left before the start of the Sochi Winter Olympics, Wang Meng missed the opportunity to participate in the Sochi Winter Olympics after colliding with a team member during training, resulting in a double fracture of the inner and outer ankle bones of his right foot.

Wang Meng later announced her retirement, having run a company but eventually returning to the short track speed skating program she was familiar with, becoming the head of the coaching staff of the national speed skating and short track speed skating teams in 2019.

If Wang Meng's character does not become an athlete, he may suffer a great loss in society and even embark on the road of crime. However, it is this kind of character that allows Wang Meng to achieve such outstanding results. Wang Meng

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