Original title: A group of "baby soldiers" who stepped on the snowboard with Su Yiming
The first day of 20 is still spent in training. On February 18, Su Yiming, who was preparing for the "Fourteenth Winter" at Zhalantun Jinlongshan Ski Resort, spent his 20th birthday. For skiers, being born in February is like a contract with the snow, and they have to "review" their growth once a year.
On February 16, 2019, at Chongli Genting Ski Resort in Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province, the athletes of the Shanxi team appeared on the snowboard men's big air platform of the Second Youth Association. A curly-haired teenager slowly slid out of the snow slope on a skateboard, jumped, soared, and spun, and landed steadily, finally finishing at 9200 points won the championship of the snowboard men's big air event, and people remembered "No. 101 Su Yiming". Two days later, he won the men's snowboard slopestyle event again with a high score, which coincided with his 15th birthday.
Since then, Shanxi's report card in winter sports is no longer "zero", and Su Yiming's appearance has opened a door for this province with weak ice and snow sports, allowing more children to start stepping on snowboarding.
Three years later, at the Beijing Winter Olympics, Su Yiming won the gold medal in the men's snowboard big air event, achieving a breakthrough of zero gold medals in the Chinese snowboard Winter Olympics. Three days later, he ushered in the 18th birthday gift, and the Winter Olympics 1 gold and 1 silver became the most "Versailles" birthday gift he gave himself. Overnight, Su Yiming planted ice and snow dreams in the hearts of countless young people.
And the first group of children who felt the power of idols had already started their own journey, and when Su Yiming officially became the "adult of Bensan", he was given a special gift - under the influence of the "Su Yiming effect", a group of eleven or twelve-year-old Shanxi snowboarders have stood on the stage of "Fourteen Winters".
The "Ice and Snow Dream" that started with Su Yiming
A native of Jilin, he practiced skiing with his parents at the age of 4 and often trains abroad. According to ** reports, Huang Haihong, director of the Shanxi Provincial Ice and Snow Sports Center, had "no more than 30 words" of Su Yiming's initial understanding, and at that time, he was looking for "soldiers" to prepare for the winter project of the Second Youth Association. Shanxi's ice and snow foundation is weak, and can only seek cooperation with Heilongjiang, Jilin, Inner Mongolia and other strong ice and snow provinces, but the two projects of "snowboard slopestyle" and "big air" have just started in China, therefore, Huang Haihong set his sights on the "folk master", Su Yiming entered his field of vision, and at the Second Youth Conference, the 15-year-old Su Yiming won two gold medals on behalf of Shanxi, and showed the talent and psychological quality of a few top athletes.
The introduction of Su Yiming has played an exemplary role. Huang Haihong told the reporter of China Youth Daily and China Youth Network that in order to prepare for the "14th Winter" and even accumulate ice and snow sports talents for Shanxi in the long run, an extensive selection of materials was carried out in August 2020, and finally, more than 50 children were selected to practice snowboarding, "Most of them are from Shanxi, and many children have never seen the 'original material' of snow." In January 2021, the children officially went to snow training.
The first time it snowed was at an indoor ski resort in Yunnan. 11-year-old Zhang Shuya remembers that at first, everyone was a little scared, and the coach pulled their hats down a little bit, tried a few more times, and began to feel the joy of skiing. 12-year-old Zhang Xiaoran remembers that the coach also took them to slide down from the field on their stomachs or sits, and when the snow season drew to a close, the snow became softer and the speed was slower, and they gradually got used to it.
After completing the transition from 0 to 1, after the Beijing Winter Olympics, Su Yiming's Japanese coach Yasuhiro Sato gave suggestions on the selection of materials, and the training team finally left less than one-eighth of the children and became the "Shanxi 20 class". The six post-10 players who appeared in the women's halfpipe competition of the "14th Winter" snowboard open group are among them, and 5 of them entered the preliminaries for the first time. In addition, they will be joined by Zhou Yizhu, who is known as the "future star of Chinese snowboarding", who is already well-known in the circle at the age of 12 - in 2023, at the Winter Whitewater Tour held at Copper Mountain Ski Resort in Colorado, USA, Zhou Yizhu, who was only 11 years old at the time, won the second place in the women's snowboard halfpipe. In the preliminaries of the "Fourteenth Winter", Zhou Yizhu also became the only player in this group of "baby soldiers" to advance to the finals.
Whether it is the addition of Zhou Yizhu or the establishment of the "Class 20", in Huang Haihong's view, it is a continuous manifestation of the "Su Yiming effect". According to him, taking the "Fourteenth Winter" contestants as an example, there are already three echelons of snowboarding alone, Su Yiming and Zhou Yizhu are the first echelon, and the second echelon is three or four years younger than Su Yiming, participating in the youth group competition, and the third echelon is the group of "baby army" of U-shaped field skills.
I know very well that with their age and level, it will not be easy to qualify. Huang Haihong said that one of the obvious differences between the children of the "Class 20" and Zhou Yizhu and other players is the accumulation of high-level competition experience, so knowing that they cannot achieve good results, they must also create good competition conditions for the children as much as possible, "I hope they can grow through the experience of the competition, and after 4 years, these children will be more mature and perform better than now in the next Winter Games."
Grab from the doll and continue with love.
I used to practice martial arts, but when I practiced martial arts, I would get a little dizzy, and practicing skiing was very exciting and happy. She was young and small, Guo Wanshi had short hair when she first joined the team, and her teammates treated her as a little boy, so she quietly grew long hair and learned to cut her hair. On the ski slope, this girl who is used to muffling and changing is also a down-to-earth appearance, she said that her small goal is to practice the 360 with the right foot outward, and when asked about the "big goal", she did not mention the gold and silver, but smiled and said: "Then strive to open the rotation 540." β
The happiness of turning on the 540, Wang Yanni experienced it last year, "huge happiness, thief excitement". She distinctly remembers that she completed a coherent set of movements at noon "around 11 o'clock" and successfully "stood", which took her 10 and a half days to unlock. After getting the best result in the "class" in the "Fourteenth Winter" - the 12th place in the preliminaries, she has gone to Changbai Mountain to continue training, "hoping to lay a solid foundation and strive to open the spin 720". At the age of 13, she always emphasized the importance of the foundation, including when communicating with Zhou Yizhu, she would also ask more questions about how to lay the foundation, "just like building a building, if the foundation is not good, it is useless how high the floor is."
Competitive sports cannot be uprooted. Huang Haihong said frankly that it is necessary not only to give the players time to grow gradually, but also to reasonably pour resources to help them avoid detours. After becoming the coach of the "Class 20" in 2022, Zheng Yunlong has experienced new changes in training support and training methods, even though he is only 22 years old, "When we practice, the venue is not so standard, the ski equipment is also a relatively old material, and the bottom of the board is not as smooth as it is now. He stood on the sidelines of the 14th Winter and commanded the players, and if it weren't for the postponement of the race due to the pandemic, his stage would have been the track β he had already qualified for the 14th Winter, but the event was postponed for four years, and he eventually retired in 2021 due to injury.
Changing his identity, Zheng Yunlong witnessed the development of scientific training, "6 children in 6 states, with the help of the scientific research team, we need to adjust the training plan according to each person's situation." He remembers that in the past, traditional training easily emphasized the accumulation of "quantity" and ignored the fatigue of athletes. Moreover, with the rapid development of ice and snow sports in China, the training venues and equipment are also more diversified, not only can there be four-season ski resorts, but the use of protective air cushions also helps athletes break through themselves, "the same thing is that you can't go home during the New Year." Summer in Chengdu, winter in Changbai Mountain and Chongli, all year round, the trajectory is clear.
When they were in Chengdu, the children of "Class 20" had the opportunity to watch Su Yiming's training. "Handsome" is their unified evaluation of "senior brother", "so powerful, what action is basically one by one". Wang Yanni emphasized that in addition to appreciation, they will learn Su Yiming's take-off movements and concepts in the air. In Huang Haihong's view, Su Yiming's biggest inspiration to young players is to "love this project from the bottom of your heart", in other words, to turn "I want to practice" into "I want to practice", which is the key to determining how far and how high an athlete can go, "If he likes it in his bones, he will take the initiative to study, so that he can make this project to the extreme." β
The members of the "Class 20" almost had a "preference" for the first time with Xuezhao, but the summer physical training, wearing snow goggles and being sunburned into a "yin and yang face", homesickness, injuries and involuntary fear of standing on a high place have all become test questions, testing their sincerity in skiing again and again.
Zhang Xiaoran remembered that when he first joined the team, everyone was unfamiliar with it, and he was embarrassed to reveal his homesickness, so he hid in the quilt and cried. She replied, "We are hungry." After a while, the sorrow was dissolved, but the friendship was established; In the face of the half-white and half-black faces, they also found a way, "take off the mask, and the tan will be even"; As for injuries, after the pain, it has become the material for them to ridicule each other, in Zhang Shuqi's view, "Stuck (falling) can't be avoided, so practice well, do a good job, reduce injuries, and don't let yourself hurt in vain." In the face of difficulties, this group of teenage girls "like the feeling of flying while skiing", and said that "the road they choose has to climb and pass".
Among the 6 girls, Zhang Yiran was the only team member who failed to break into the "Fourteenth Winter" preliminaries, but the experience of the qualifying round made her very unforgettable, "I completed the first 360 in my life, I flew out to grab the board, I used to do it in the slot, this time I don't know where I got the guts." Although, she eventually fell on the track, but when she took off to complete the move, she began to impress herself.
The snow sensation of snowboarding is very important, and the younger you are, the better you can get in touch with it. Huang Haihong revealed that Su Yiming, Zhou Yizhu and the "20 class" growth experience gave him a deeper understanding of this project, "according to the characteristics of the project, snowboarding should start from an earlier age to let children contact and participate, and at the same time, we must try to break through the traditional competitive sports training method, and look forward to the society and more families to participate in talent training." He said frankly that after the end of the "14th Winter", he plans to select a group of younger children to "really start from the baby". (China Youth Daily, China Youth Network reporter Liang Xuan).
China Youth Daily, February 19, Zhalantun.
*: China Youth Daily.