At the just-concluded Hong Kong and Macao exchange visits for Mainland Olympic athletes, Wang Yilu and Huang Dongping once again became the focus of everyone's attention. As Olympic gold medalists of the Chinese badminton team, from Victoria Bay to St. Paul's Arch, they find themselves adapting to move from the arena to a bigger stage.
At this point, it has been 5 months since the Tokyo Olympics in the summer of 2021. Since that full bloom on the top field, the duo has experienced the brilliant National Games, Sudirman Cup, Tang You Cup and Danish Open in the next 51 days of consecutive battles, and won three gold medals and one silver medal, Wang Yilu and Huang Dongping seem to have opened the second vein of Ren Dou, and it seems that they have broken through the cocoon and entered the peak of their careers.
Walking along the road, people began to recognize Wang Yilu and Huang Dongping; during the period when they returned to Beijing from Tokyo to quarantine, they had countless video interviews every day. Back in Fujian Province to prepare for the National Games, Huang Dongping came out of the airport, waiting for her in addition to her family members who had not been seen for a long time, as well as fans and media. After the National Games, Wang Yilu took the only day off and returned to his alma mater in Jiaxing with his parents to compete with his brothers and sisters.
In the face of overwhelming attention, they have been a little uncomfortable, but they also understand that the responsibilities and obligations that accompany honor are the starting point for new growth for them.
10 years ago, 18-year-old Wang Yilu and 17-year-old Huang Dongping joined hands for the first time on the international stage, and they won the mixed doubles runner-up of the Asian Youth Championship. After a pleasant initial partnership, they returned to their respective men's and women's doubles majors. It was not until the end of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games that the team at the end of the year looked for a new pair at the beginning of the new Olympic cycle that Wang Yilu and Huang Dongping were able to "renew the frontier".
In the past five years, the introverted Wang Yilu and the hot-tempered Huang Dongping have experienced "breaking up without joy" and "cold war to the end". They are like two armored vehicles driving side by side, interpreting the burning emotions on the one hand, and at the same time, they are constantly variable by the rampage. Although the record is not bad, for a long time, they are all members of the "double insurance" of the national mixed doubles. Compared with the final summit, the final of the meeting seems to have become an inexplicable fate for them.
Until the summer of 2021, during the semi-finals of the Tokyo Olympic Games, Wang Yilu encouraged Huang Dongping to say: "You will fight me to death, there is no way back!" After the game, this domineering voice "went out of the circle." They were not the favourites in the final, but they completed the self-counterattack of the Olympic summit with the fearlessness of the afterlife. As Huang Dongping said in the cover story of Huang Dongping in the magazine at the end of 2018, Yang Ming, the head coach of the mixed doubles group, said: "They have absolute strength and room for growth, and winning or losing for a period of time will not become an obstacle for them to go higher and farther, they need time and patience." ”
Fast forward 3 years later, behind the double crown of the Olympic Games and the national games, the "Yellow Duck" combination has been tempered and tempered.
#本文节选自2022年1月刊 #