Olympic silver medal, and 16-year-old summer - "dark horse" Sheng Lihao's dream debut

Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, July 25 Title: Olympic silver medal, and 16-year-old summer

-- "Dark Horse" Sheng Lihao's dream debut

Xinhua News Agency reporters Lin Deren, Shen Nan and Wang Meng

At the age of 16, shooter Sheng Lihao experienced a major event in his life. At the world-renowned Tokyo Olympics, he fought the final shot and won a silver medal.

Sheng Lihao is the youngest member of the Chinese shooting team's Tokyo Olympic squad and the first official international competition of his shooting career.

Standing in the final of the Olympic Games, sheng Lihao, who is tall and thin, is very conspicuous, his face is still young, but the style of the game has an old age that does not match his age. In the final competition, one master after another was eliminated, Sheng Lihao insisted on the final two-two duel, although it could not be reversed in the end, but the last shot hit a beautiful 10.8 rings.

Strong psychology, as can be seen.

After the game, Sheng Lihao's expression still could not see any waves, and the answer to the question was still consistently short, revealing a strand of simplicity. Olympic debut to win a medal – "good luck, very happy"; the first international competition is the pressure of the Olympic Games - "feel fine, there is no great pressure"; the last two shots before the fall behind the opponent 1.9 rings - "know, don't think much, just play"; the expectation before coming to Tokyo - "want to experience this feeling", what feeling - just ... "Quite lively"; Rio Olympic games have seen - "look, then feel ... Forgot"; I heard that I like to play games - "Yes, I prefer to play games".

To be able to stand on the Olympic field, Sheng Lihao is lucky. The Tokyo Olympics had nothing to do with him, but due to the postponement of the Olympics for a year, the Suzhou boys, who only entered the national team at the end of 2020, were able to pass the Olympic trials and finally spelled into the Olympic lineup of the Chinese shooting team.

Sheng Lihao's coach Yao Ye revealed that after coming to Tokyo, his training state was not very good, and like many young players, the change in the environment has affected him to a certain extent. "The main problem arises in the mindset. The training state after I first came to Tokyo was a headache for me, fortunately, yesterday's last pre-game training, we managed to solve a certain problem, from today's performance on the field, it has produced a certain effect. ”

The level of qualifying for the men's 10m air rifle at the Tokyo Olympics is quite high. Sheng Lihao's 629.2 rings are not a big problem in the finals of the usual world competition, but in this game, he is only 0.1 rings ahead of the ninth place, and he is almost eliminated.

Yao Ye used "fluke" to describe the process of Sheng Lihao's breakthrough in the qualifiers. For the final, Yao Ye is relatively satisfied, but a little regretful, if the number of rings in the second half of the game is higher, it will cause more pressure on the American player Shana, then the result will be more suspenseful.

Sheng Lihao began to contact shooting in the sixth grade of primary school, entered suzhou sports school in the first year of junior high school, and showed a considerable level after half a year of training, entering the provincial training team at the end of 2017 and winning the championship in the 2018 provincial games and a series of national competitions. At the end of 2020, Yao Ye, a former rifle national player who was the coach of the provincial team, thought about it several times and finally agreed to let this thin teenager who was jumping into the national team and participate in the fiercely competitive Olympic trials. From zero points to the second place in the final selection points, Sheng Lihao", "one black to the end", actually entered the Olympics.

Along the way, the name of "genius" was inevitably added to the head of Sheng Lihao. For this statement, Yao Ye did not agree. "I told him, 'You're not a genius, you know I know. If you're a genius, you don't have to train, you should be able to hold a gun from birth. Then I showed him the results of a series of competitions since he entered the provincial team, and showed him what level he was at at the beginning and what level he is now. I told him that if you are a genius, you can ascend to the sky in one step, obviously not, you are sweating through your own efforts, and you have trained hard every day to get to today. Yao Ye said.

Winning an Olympic medal at the age of 16 is already a rare achievement for a teenager. However, in Yao Ye's view, there are still many places where Sheng Lihao needs to improve. He said: "Just because some achievements have been made, some problems cannot be covered up. His problems are still many, such as too young, reading is not systematic, the cognition of shooting sports, including other aspects of cognitive ability to be improved. Such a young child, you can't practice shooting all your life, after all, you have to contact other industries, and training competitions and cultural learning are equally important things for him in the future. After all, he is only 16 years old, and there is still a long way to go. ”

Two days later, Sheng Lihao will also participate in the air rifle mixed team competition. I hope that he can continue to challenge himself in the Olympic arena with that simplicity and purity. (End)