At the first leg of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics short track speed skating selection competition, Zhang Tianyi, a 17-year-old born in 2004, ranked first in the total points of the men's team and qualified for the Winter Olympics, and he also became the third Chinese male athlete to receive a ticket to the short track speed skating competition of the Beijing Winter Olympics after Wu Dajing and Ren Ziwei. Able to suppress An Kai, Sun Long, Yu Songnan and other "big brothers", the first to break through from the selection tournament to get the Winter Olympic tickets, 17-year-old Zhang Tianyi is eye-catching.
Zhang Tianyi
Zhang Tianyi was born in 2004 in Changchun, Jilin Province. Two years before he was born, Dayang Yang had just achieved a breakthrough of zero gold medals in China's ice and snow projects at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. In December 2010, 6-year-old Zhang Tianyi began learning short track speed skating at the Jilin Provincial Sports School. Zhang Tianyi trained hard and had a high level of understanding, and after six years of tempering, he began to emerge in the National Junior Championships since 2016.
In March 2017, the National Short Track Speed Skating Championships were held in Changchun. In the men's 1500m junior competition, 12-year-old Zhang Tianyi won a silver medal, his first national medal. In October 2019, in the Shanghai Super Cup short track speed skating competition, Zhang Tianyi once again won the second place in the men's 1000 meters. In the 2000m mixed relay, he also won the championship with Han Tianyu, Zhang Chutong and Wang Ye.
Zhang Tianyi won the bronze medal at the Winter Youth Olympic Games
In the international arena, Zhang Tianyi also has excellent performances. At the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics in Lausanne, Switzerland, Zhang Tianyi competed in the men's 500m race, from the preliminary round to the quarter-finals and semi-finals, he advanced to the top of the group. In the final, Zhang Tianyi won the bronze medal with a time of 48.570 seconds. In January of the same year, at the 2019-2020 ISU Short Track Speed Skating World Junior Championships, Zhang Tianyi first won the bronze medal in the men's 1500 meters race, and then appeared in the third group of the 500 meters preliminary round, although he encountered an unfavorable starting point, Zhang Tianyi showed amazing starting ability, grabbed the second place after the start, and then completed the surpass of the Russian skaters in the penultimate lap, and won the first place in the group with a time of 40.331 seconds. It broke the world youth record of 40.610 seconds previously set by Hungarian star Liu Shaoang in 2017.
After several seasons of training, Zhang Tianyi grew up rapidly and became a new generation of post-00s generation of Short Track Speed Skating in China together with Sun Long and Li Wenlong. Compared with An Kai, Sun Long and Li Wenlong, Zhang Tianyi is the youngest, but his explosiveness and endurance in the game are not inferior. Zhang Tianyi is best at the 1000 meters 1500 meters of middle distance projects. In the first leg of the selection competition, he won the men's 1500 meters championship and reached the A standard of the challenge, so he got 10,000 points of championship points, and ranked first in the men's team points, and successfully obtained a qualification for the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Compared with the two big brothers Wu Dajing and Ren Ziwei, Zhang Tianyi still lacks experience in the competition. However, he has the vigor of a young player, especially the first time to participate in the Winter Olympics, dare to fight on the field, and face Huang Daxian, Liu Shaolin, Liu Shaoang and other famous players in the men's 1500 meters event, and will certainly not be afraid of the stage. If you do a good job of the details of the game and give it a go, there may be a cold miracle. In the 2000m mixed relay and the men's 5000m relay, Zhang Tianyi can also play as an alternate team member, truly making Wu Dajing and Ren Ziwei "like a tiger adding wings". (Huang Kai)