Less than two months before the Beijing Winter Olympics, Zhang Bei, the leader and head coach of the national cross-country skiing training team and the director of the third department of the Training Center of the Winter Games of the State General Administration of Sports, said that China's cross-country skiing project has built a talent echelon on the basis of the original relatively weak foundation, formed a composite team, and gone all out to prepare for the Beijing Winter Olympics, and has now qualified for all 12 sub-events. In the future, the team will continue to enhance its combat effectiveness through healthy competition and strive to bring the team's competitiveness to a new level. "Every project must strive for excellence, can not give up any project, can not neglect any step of the gliding, this is the requirement for our team." Zhang Bei said.
As a basic sport in snow sports, cross-country skiing is known as "snow track and field", and will produce 12 gold medals at the Beijing Winter Olympics. Cross-country skiing is also a competition in biathlon nordic and biathlon winter. "Cross-country skiing used to have a weak foundation because there were fewer people engaged in it, and when I first started forming a team, there were fewer people to choose from and the range was relatively small." Zhang Bei said. In the process of preparing for the Beijing Winter Olympics, the national cross-country skiing training team not only expanded the selection of materials through cross-border cross-sports selection, but also formed a composite coaching and support team including Chinese and foreign coaches and experts. With the implementation of the strategy of "expanding from the south to the west and expanding to the east" of ice and snow sports over the years, many ice and snow projects, including cross-country skiing, are attracting more and more young people to participate, which provides a possibility for further consolidating the construction of talent echelons.
According to Zhang Bei, at present, the national cross-country skiing training team has shown some relatively distinct new characteristics in terms of personnel composition and distribution. In the past, the personnel mainly came from the three northeastern provinces, but now the athletes come from 14 provinces, autonomous regions and cities such as Shandong, Yunnan, Xinjiang and Tibet, and the distribution is more extensive. In particular, young athletes from some ethnic minorities have grown up rapidly, such as Diniger Yilamujiang of the Uyghur ethnic group, and the younger Pumi boys in the second echelon, Gulong Zeren, Tibetan Solang Quzhen and Kelsang Quzhen. In the recently concluded FIS points race in Lucca, Finland, 1.4 km free sprint men's U18, 17-year-old Gu Long Zeren performed well and won the gold medal. "The most memorable of the year was this game in Lucca." Gu Long Saiden said, "I am very grateful to the team for giving me such an opportunity to perform myself in international competitions, and I will try to show my fighting spirit in the future matches." "The 20-year-old Diniger has recently performed very well in a series of FIS points races in the country. Looking ahead to the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics, in the six women's events, Diniger hopes to have a better performance in the two events of individual sprint and 30 km collective departure. "In the later training, I will continue to work hard towards the goal and continue to improve myself in terms of speed, endurance and so on." Diniger said.
"If you want to surpass others, the quality of training must be higher than others." Zhang Bei said that in this regard, the composite team composed of experts at home and abroad is working hard to help the team members do better. So far, the women's team has 4 players who are relatively close to the level, so the women's relay event is naturally expected to have more expectations. "The other is the short-distance project that Diniger just said he wanted to show."
In the past, in the long-distance event, Chinese athletes not only had difficulty in participating in the competition, but also had difficulty in completing the race. "Now whether it's men's 50 km or women's 30 km, we have the qualifications." Zhang Bei said that we require players to go all out on the field, no matter what, "In addition to the construction of skills, the team attaches great importance to the cultivation of athletes' personality and mental state." Fighting at the doorstep of our homes this time is better than winning glory for the country, and no matter what kind of difficulties or problems we encounter, we must dare to fight and fight well, and we must not accept defeat. ”
Image from Xinhua News Agency