In February 2002, at the 19th Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, USA, Yang Yang led the way in the women's 500m final of short track speed skating, and finally won the championship with a time of 44.187 seconds, achieving the breakthrough of the Chinese delegation in the winter Olympic Games. She then won another gold medal in the 1000m with a time of 1:36.391.
Yang Yang has won 59 world championships in his career, the most Chinese athletes. After retiring, she became the first person in China to be elected to the International Olympic Committee as an athlete. She holds several hats for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, as vice president of the International Olympic Committee's World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and chairman of the Sports Committee of the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee.
Many people regard her as a model of chinese athletes' transformation and success after retirement, in her view, this is a one-way thinking that defines value by consequential theory of success or failure, "I have never wanted to get what kind of position, identity, I want a kind of freedom, free to grasp my own life." 」 ”
On February 16, 2002, at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Yang Yang won the women's 500m competition in short track speed skating, achieving a "breakthrough of zero" for China's winter Olympic gold medal Picture/Visual China
Behind the glory of winning two gold medals in the 2002 Winter Olympics is a very deep dark mark in her soul, and after losing the strengths she is determined to win, "like a street rat, she was fiercely criticized", she told herself that there was no way back in the next competition, which led to the breakthrough of the first gold zero of the Winter Olympics and the big reversal of the icing on the cake.
Looking back on her career, Yang Yang's deepest memory is not that Salt Lake City won two gold medals, nor did she get the highest podium again and again, but the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, which was the last Winter Olympics she participated in as an athlete, won the bronze medal in the 1000-meter short track speed skating, and the story she wants to tell is not her own medal.
"In the women's cross-country skiing 20 km relay competition, the snow pole of a member of the Canadian team with a very high voice was broken, cross-country skiing needed to be coordinated by all fours, the pole was broken, which was equivalent to one leg missing, and they quickly fell from the first place to the fourth place... At this time, a snow pole was suddenly handed over from the coaching area of the other team, and the Canadian team member got the snow pole and rushed forward, and finally they got a silver medal. Yang Yang has told this story more than once in public or in interviews, and she often can't control herself, and she chokes up halfway through the talk, "For me, this scene is too shocking!" ”
The Canadian team later found out that it was the Coach of the Norwegian team who handed them the snow poles, and at the moment when the coach handed the snow poles, the Norwegian team was ahead of the Canadian team, "Why can he hand the poles to his opponents?" The coach said, 'I just can't see a good athlete, a sports team, because of the equipment, can't play at a high level.' ’”
"The results of sports competition are very cruel," Yang Yang returned home with the Chinese delegation after the Turin Winter Olympics. Yang Yang, 31 at the time, "is the oldest player in the world for our project," and she and several bronze medal veterans walked behind, "When we walked out, the welcoming crowd was gone, and the reporters also crowded the champions to the VIP hall for a press conference." ”
Because the luggage is a special passage for unified walking, she and the old team members can't leave early, "we just sat on the road and waited." She said she had a bystander's calm in her mind, a scene that overlapped with the scene she had won the first gold medal for the Winter Olympics for China four years ago and what she had seen in Turin, hitting her, "Sport should not just be about losing and winning!" We can't just cheer for a victory, we should be moved by more sportsmanship! ”
On December 31, 2014, at the Beijing Olympic Park, Chinese Winter Olympic athletes attended the New Year's Eve celebration, which was also a publicity event for Beijing's bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympics. From left: Nina Li, Hong Zhang, Qiaobo Ye, Yang Yang, Xue Shen, Hongbo Zhao, Yang Zhou Photo/Visual China
After retiring from the army, she was nominated by the then President of the Olympic Committee, Rogge, to become a member of the IOC's Women and Sports Working Committee. In 2010, she ran as an athlete for the IOC membership and was successful. In 2016, she was elected to the Board of Directors of the International Skating Federation, becoming the first female director of the organization in its 125 years of existence.
She also introduced the IOC's "Athlete Career Development Project" into China, founded the "Champion Fund", combined with China's actual situation to help professional athletes complete self-awareness and career possibilities training and development in the transition period of retirement and employment, "Although it is called the 'Champion Fund', we are not only serving the champions, but advocating the spirit of athletes striving for champions and being the best of themselves." The fund insists on serving the professional athletes in the pyramid of the tower and the ordinary athletes in the tower, "compared to the Olympic champions, the world champions, they have less resources and space." ”
She is also an entrepreneur who founded the "Flying Ice Sports Center" in Shanghai in 2013 and is one of the participants and pioneers of the "North Ice Southward Shift". Having experienced the difficulties of sparse students in the early stage of entrepreneurship, the difficulty of unsustainable operation of ice rinks, and the almost resale of sales, and the market dividends of ice and snow sports that have heated up rapidly in China due to policy support, not only have the ice rinks achieved a balance in revenue, but also in the good environment of internal and external cooperation, they have run through the channel of market-oriented training and training and professional talent transportation.
With fruitful career results, Yang Yang also has an enviable small family, she and her husband have two children, a son and a daughter. When she applied for the China 2022 Winter Olympics in Kuala Lumpur in July 2015, her youngest daughter was in her womb for more than five months. She often carries her children with her when she goes to meetings and work abroad, and during the 2012 London Olympics, she traveled in England for 21 days, and her son was only a few months old at the time, and she always held him in her arms, and only when she went on stage to present awards to athletes, she was handed over to others to help take care of him for a while.
After entering the Beijing Winter Olympic cycle, Yang Yang once again began the super schedule, "The last thing athletes in a fleeting competitive state want to miss is the Olympic event, as IOC President Thomas Bach said, we should turn the re-hosting of the Olympic Games into a festival to celebrate human solidarity and the world's recovery from the epidemic." As the Chairman of the Athletes Committee of the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee, I will continue to actively cooperate with the Organizing Committee with the members of our Committee, give more suggestions to the Organizing Committee at the operational level, and make our efforts to make our efforts to receive athletes from all countries and regions for the 2022 Winter Olympics. And as Vice Presidents of WADA, from the World Anti-Doping Agency, it is our responsibility to defend the purity of sport and protect clean athletes. ”