△ Beijing Winter Paralympic Chinese ice hockey team athletes in training.
In an ice hockey hall in Shunyi, Beijing, a group of warriors armed to the teeth drive steel frame ice sleds on the ice every day, constantly starting around the ice ball, sliding, sliding backwards, turning, pressing steps, stopping and hitting... The huge sound of the friction and collision between the ice sled and the ice surface makes the onlookers can't help but beat their hearts, and the special atmosphere of ice and fire can be strongly felt through the thick protective glass.
This is the athletes of the Chinese paralympic ice hockey team who will represent China for the first time in the Winter Paralympic Games, and as the final winter training before the competition, the players have fought to the limit. For more than 4 years before that, they had been quietly participating in training and selection in Qingdao, repeating the above arduous training day after day, just to realize their own Olympic dream. The precious moments that this group of disabled athletes have worked hard to chase the light and chase their dreams have been tracked and recorded by he Yi, a photojournalist of Peninsula Metropolis Daily, who accidentally discovered them, and won the first prize of the 2021 World Media Summit Global News Awards Ice and Snow Sports Photography Competition Story Group Picture. A few days ago, a reporter from China Report approached the Chinese Paralympic ice hockey team and felt their story.
Fall down again and again, get up again and again
Ice hockey is known as the world's most fiercely opposed, attack-defense transition rhythm of the fastest group ball sport, the physical requirements are very high, and disabled ice hockey (also known as ice hockey hockey), and because of this, it has become one of the most enjoyable events in the Winter Paralympic Games.
△ Disabled ice hockey players in training.
Similar to the rules of ice hockey for able-bodied people, the ice hockey game for the disabled is also allowed to be reasonable collision, and the athlete can use the shoulder, chest and hip to collide with the opponent's ball-controlling athlete, and an ice hockey game is equivalent to a "hand-to-hand combat", which has very high physical fitness and physical requirements for the athletes.
Athletes with lower body disabilities sit on a special ice sled with ice knives at the bottom, use the toothed ice hockey stick to move to the ground, find a suitable position to swing the club to hit the ball, and the players need tacit cooperation to pass the ice ball into the opponent's goal as much as possible and prevent the opponent's pass and shoot. This sport has a very fast transition speed of attack and defense, requiring athletes to have good upper limb strength, balance and movement flexibility to achieve "human sled integration".
Born in 1960, para hockey did not appear at the Winter Paralympic Games until 1994, even later in China, and did not start until after Beijing successfully bid for the 24th Winter Olympics and the 13th Winter Paralympic Games in 2015. Nationwide, Shandong was the first province to carry out the project, and Qingdao also signed an agreement with the China Disabled Persons' Federation to develop paralympic ice hockey projects and jointly build a national Paralympic ice hockey team, but it was not known to outsiders for a long time.
He Yi, a veteran photojournalist with 20 years of experience, was during an outdoor running exercise in May 2018 when he accidentally found a group of disabled young people wearing sportswear entering and leaving the Qingdao Guoxin Sports Center every day, although they had lower limb disabilities, but their upper limbs were muscular, which was very eye-catching. After chatting, I learned that these players are the newly formed Chinese Paralympic Ice Hockey Training Team, they are elite players selected from Shandong, Hebei and other provinces, training and selection at the Qingdao Guoxin Sports Center Ice Rink, and the best of them will represent China in the 2022 Winter Paralympic Ice Hockey Tournament.
△ Disabled ice hockey players compete fiercely in the game.
He Yi immediately had the idea of an interview, and through repeated communication with the disabled persons' federation department, he came to the ice rink for the first time. Although he was mentally prepared, he was deeply shocked by the scene in front of him: more than a dozen steel frame ice sleds galloping on the ice, the team members used straps to tie themselves to the special sleigh to run back and forth, collisions often even people with ice sleds fell out of a few meters away, rolling in the rolling they used the clubs in their hands to support the ground to get up and continue to move forward, fell on the ice again and again and then got up again and again, next to the ice rink placed their wheelchairs and prosthetics ...
"Fate once closed a window for them, and now it's opened a window for them to ice hockey." He Yi was deeply infected by the tenacious fighting spirit of the team members, and he began to shoot this group in May 2018 until this year's closed training in Beijing, leaving a large number of precious and wonderful pictures.
"Fate has given us such luck, can we not fight?"
During these years and long periods, the Chinese Paralympic Ice Hockey Training Team members have always maintained high-intensity training, two points and one line every day in the hotel and training venues, generally two exercises a day, one and a half hours each time, once in the morning and afternoon.
△ Athletes are ready to leave the ice rink after training.
Although it is necessary to wear helmets, neck guards and chest guards every day of training, due to the speed, the players on the field will often fall to the nose and face, the body is bruised and purple, and even broken into bone fractures, and they are often injured by other people's clubs; because the intensity of ice hockey training is very large, every time they are almost tired to collapse, after a training, their underwear on the cold field is always wet.
The team members themselves are disabled, life is naturally more difficult than the able-bodied people, and many are already dragging the family with their mouths, in order to survive, they "turned" to ice hockey before engaged in a variety of jobs, there are repair prosthetics, there are lottery tickets, there are odd jobs to do small business, as well as video clips, many have also practiced athletics, cycling, taekwondo, archery and other disabled sports competitions, but since practicing ice hockey, they quickly fell in love with this challenging sport, overcome long-term closure, away from their relatives The lack of events and the difficulty of meager income are to realize an Olympic dream.
From the captain of the Shandong team to the captain of the national team, Cui Yutao from the rural area of Pingdu, Shandong, is 36 years old this year, as an offensive "sharp knife" forward, he does not know how many injuries he has suffered over the years, how much suffering he has suffered, in order to chase his dream has been persisted to this day; 31-year-old Xu Jinqiang is from Jining, Shandong, who has practiced archery and rowing, he gave up his original income of nearly 10,000 yuan per month to do new media to devote himself to the ice hockey career, without complaint or regret; 20-year-old Wang Zhidong was only 15 years old when he joined the team, when he was the youngest member of the team, tall, tall, Fast and steady, he plays as a center and is the main goalscorer; The 38-year-old Yu Jing is the only female member of the team, she has been engaged in fencing, sitting volleyball, wheelchair basketball and other 4 disabled sports, and has a lot of experience, but this is also her first time to participate in the Winter Paralympic Games...
△ After the training, the athletes communicate in the locker room.
It is precisely because China has won the right to host the 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games that they have the honor of becoming the first disabled athletes in China to enter this event, and it is precisely because of their unremitting efforts that China's paralympic ice hockey has started from scratch but has made amazing progress, and has now become a quasi-first-class international team.
At the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Paralympic Games in South Korea, the Chinese wheelchair curling team won the gold medal, which greatly encouraged the athletes of the ice hockey team, and the athletes often encouraged each other with a sentence that was, "How many years of practice in other sports can not touch the edge of the Olympic Games, we have been practicing for 5 years to play the Olympic Games, fate has given us such luck, can we not fight?" ”
In November 2018, at the World Para Hockey (Group C) Championship, the Chinese team defeated Australia and Finland respectively to win the championship of this category and was promoted to Group B; at the Paralympic Ice Hockey World Championships held in Sweden in September 2021, the Chinese team successfully won the "ticket" to the Winter Paralympic Ice Hockey Competition with the first place in Group B.
"Unity, dare to fight"
△ At 6:00 a.m. on July 12, 2021, the Winter Paralympic ice hockey team members packed their bags and prepared to leave Qingdao.
On July 12, 2021, the Chinese Winter Paralympic ice hockey team packed up their bags and left Qingdao, where they had been training for four years, to start the journey of the Beijing Winter Olympics. At present, there are 23 athletes in this national training team, with an average age of about 25 years old.
Russian coach Nikolai, who led the Russian national para hockey team to a silver medal at the 2014 Sochi Winter Paralympic Games, is currently the head coach of the Chinese team, and in the past four years, he has led the Chinese national Paralympic ice hockey team to participate in many international competitions.
According to Wang Jianbin, deputy leader of the Chinese Paralympic ice hockey team, Nikolai has a wealth of training experience, and ice hockey players need a large number of high-level events to maintain their competitive status, but due to the impact of the epidemic, the Chinese team can only prepare for the Winter Paralympic Games with competitions. In view of the lack of experience of the young Chinese team, at present, Nikolai mainly conducts a large number of simulated game training, and strengthens the physical fitness and tactics of the team members, and will also carefully watch and analyze the game videos of the international strong teams to understand the advantages and shortcomings of the other side, so as to train in a targeted manner.
△ The winter paralympic ice hockey players in the training camp have their travel tools wheelchairs on the sidelines.
For the goal of the Chinese Paralympic ice hockey team at the 2022 Beijing Winter Paralympic Games, Wang Jianbin is full of confidence, he told reporters that compared with European and American athletes, Although Chinese athletes are at a disadvantage in stature, the advantage lies in "small fast spirit", fast attack and dribbling will be more flexible.
"Playing at home, the goal of guaranteeing six for three is very promising, and strong teams such as Russia and the United States can also fight." The strong spirit of unity and daring to fight with chinese athletes is the best embodiment of the Olympic spirit. Wang Jianbin said.
Author: Wang Zhe, reporter of China Report
Photo: He Yi
Editor-in-charge: Xu Hao
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