Figure skating is a highly ornamental and beautiful sport, but behind every second of excitement, there is an amazing effort and sweat.
Zhao Hongbo and Shen Xue, the two on the ice, from partners to husband and wife, used champions and acquaintances to compose the most beautiful story. Now when Shen Xue retreats behind the scenes to focus on children, Zhao Hongbo still sticks to the ice rink and continues to compete in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics in the position of head coach.
Born in September 1973, Zhao Hongbo coincided with the era of family planning. He has an older brother who is 17 years older than himself, and an older sister who is 9 years older, so he was born and became the most favored and only younger brother in the family. "Positive, happy and lively. Like sports" has become Zhao Hongbo's life label,
In 1992, 19-year-old Zhao Hongbo and Shen Xue formed a partnership to start a fairy tale on the ice rink. At the 1999 World Championships, they won the silver medal in pair skating. In 2000 and 2001, he won silver and bronze medals at the World Championships. However, although the difficulty of their technical movements has reached a fairly high level, the lack of artistic expression has become a bottleneck.
At the 2009 World Championships, Shenbo won the championship with a 15.04-point advantage over the combination of Pang Qing and Tong Jian. The scene of Zhao Hongbo kneeling and proposing marriage touched countless audiences.
They briefly withdrew, but made a comeback in Vancouver in 2010 to celebrate their fourth Winter Olympics. They firmly seized the opportunity of the Russian team to alternate between the old and the new, realized the biggest dream in their lives, seized the most precious double skating gold medal, and helped China write a new history.
After retiring from the army, his wife Shen Xue retreated to the second line. Their child was born in September 2013, which is called Tiger Father and DogLess Daughter! Zhao Xue'er inherited the strong genes of her parents and won the first China Figure Skating Club League North China Championship as early as 2018.
Now Zhao Hongbo is the head coach of the Chinese figure skating team, focusing on pair skating, which is also the area he is most familiar with and good at. He gave his teammates a piece of advice: "Be good and not afraid of any opponent!" "Will he bring back gold medals for China once again in his new role?" Now with two pairs of world number 3 and no. 5 in the world, anything is really possible. In this process, "China Sports" is also ready to "dream of Beijing" with the majority of Chinese athletes.