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I am Gong Lijiao, the tokyo Olympic athletics women's shot put champion, and I am a post-85 athlete. It is said that thirty and standing, in the society, this is an age that is accumulating strength to climb upwards, small gains, young still. On the sports field, especially for the shot put project that relies on strength and explosion, I am a veteran, a veteran who constantly competes with injuries, constantly climbs from the trough but still moves forward for his dreams, and a happy veteran who has gone to the Olympic Games four times and finally fulfilled his dream of winning the championship.
"People must have dreams, what if they come true?" I used to keep this sentence on my lips, and in many moments when I could compromise with myself, I used to convince myself to persevere. Because of this persistence, at the Tokyo Olympics held in August this year, I threw a personal best of 20 meters 58, breaking the regret of "only one Olympic gold medal" and completing the Grand Slam of my career.
I have been going to the big competitions since 2007, before this Olympic Games, I have won almost all the gold medals in all competitions, and I have won the bronze medal in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the silver medal in the London Olympic Games in 2012, but the Olympic gold medal has always been my goal to tell the world, the flag I set up, in order to get on the podium, raise the national flag, play the national anthem, I waited for 21 years.
I was not born in a sports family, my parents are hard-working farmers, when I was a child, I played with the wheels of a tricycle at home, and easily threw the wheels out, when my father casually said: "Nizi has so much strength, go to the athlete." It's an untestable memory, but I did fall in love with shot put at an ignorant age.
At the age of 12, I entered the professional team, although I did not know enough about shot put, but I have begun to look forward to one day standing on the highest podium of competitive sports, let the national anthem play in the arena, let the five-star red flag fly high in the arena.
In fact, after really touching the shot put training, you know that the training is boring and lonely, throwing more than 200 times a day, and if you don't reach the goal you set, you won't leave class. Winter practice three nine, encounter extremely cold weather, frozen into "ice ball" lead ball attached to the neck, quickly stuck, a pull can tear the skin on the neck; summer practice three volts, sweaty, exhausted is like eating and drinking the same daily life.
But I never wanted to give up, I just liked throwing, and I didn't have a lot of skills and the results weren't very good. At that time, I set a small goal for myself every day, for example, I had to master one more action point than yesterday, I had to throw one more meter than yesterday, etc., it was a period of constant competition with myself, training was almost the whole of my life, I didn't have time to chase dramas, watch movies, before the Tokyo Olympics, the last time I watched a movie can be traced back to four or five years ago. I haven't been home for seven or eight years, but this is the norm for athletes, and I can only put my thoughts in the direction of home in a shot put ball. I think that when I stand on the top podium, the people I care about the most will see me there.
I've had a lot of good results since then, but it was those headwinds that helped me grow. The low point of my athletic career occurred at the Rio 2016 Olympics. Previously, I won a bronze medal and a silver medal in the Beijing and London Olympic Games, but this was due to the previous medal winners who were found to be taking banned drugs and made up for it, and a few years later, the arrival of justice once again increased my confidence in winning the championship, and also made me have a higher desire, although I have silver medals and bronze medals, but I have never stood on the podium, I want to stand up once, and it is the highest one.
At the Rio arena in 2016, I was looking forward to a breakthrough, and I could feel the atmosphere at that time, as if everyone thought that as long as I did not go out of the field, I would be an Olympic champion. The pressure overwhelmed me, I missed the medal and finished fourth, and for the first time I wanted the game to end quickly, and every ball I threw was a pain.
I practiced my best year, but something went wrong. I didn't want to come out and see anyone and felt sorry for everyone. After the race, I fell into deep self-doubt, wondering if I was unfit for the sport and I even considered whether I should retire.
Just when I fell into self-doubt, General Secretary Xi Jinping's summary of the Olympic spirit of "overcoming the self and surpassing the self" helped me out of the strange circle of self-denial and awakened my original intention of engaging in sports. After that, I learned to face "regrets" calmly and began to enjoy the game. In 2017, I won the first gold medal of the Chinese delegation to the London World Championships in the pouring rain, and I also won the gold medal of the international competition for 10 years, and the harvest in the future is a bumper harvest, and I know that I am getting closer and closer to the Olympic gold medal embedded in my heart.
But good things are a lot of grinding, on the day that the Tokyo Olympics were postponed, my heart was very lost, suddenly the tense nerves relaxed, my knees had a reaction, the pain was so painful that I was limping when I walked, and I felt that there was something wrong everywhere, like the sky was about to collapse. However, after three Olympic Games and the cruelty of so many competitive sports, what can really crush me?
After a short adjustment, I was no longer as vulnerable as I thought, and I did my best to keep my best form in the Olympic arena. The night before the final, I didn't sleep well, four or five hours of light sleep, my mind was full of perfect techniques that could shoot farther, just thinking about winning the championship.
On the field, I did a good job and continued to challenge in the face of a clear victory, and on the 6th throw, I once again continued to set a new personal best. After realizing the Olympic gold medal dream, I found that my sense of achievement not only comes from the gold medal, but also from the influence of sports, in fact, our project is very unpopular, in recent years, I have been using my enthusiasm to bring this project to the fire, and now, I have done it. Therefore, I will not leave the field easily, I have higher goals to pursue, I want to sprint to the target of 21 meters and give myself a satisfactory answer.
After 21 years of hard work, I understand that the road to chasing dreams is not a smooth road, there is no shortcut, and the biggest opponent is not others, but yourself. As a member of this society, each of us is striving to chase our dreams, and it is the dreams of each of us that gather into a tower that constitute the cornerstone of the "Chinese Dream". There is nothing more worth holding on to than a dream.
Source: China Youth Daily ( 2021-11-30 09 edition)
Source: China Youth Daily