Flag bearer Zhao Dan: From long jumper to steel frame snowmobile nova

On January 30, the flag bearer of the Chinese sports delegation to the Beijing Winter Olympics announced that Zhao Dan, a steel-frame snowmobile athlete, and Gao Tingyu, a speed skater, will serve as the flag bearer of the opening ceremony of the Chinese sports delegation to the Beijing Winter Olympics. After the news was announced, Zhao Dan posted on Weibo: "When I heard the news that I had become the standard-bearer of the Chinese delegation to the Beijing Winter Olympics, I was surprised and deeply honored. Being able to participate in the Winter Olympics at home has made me feel very lucky, and now I have an additional identity, which makes me feel more responsible and mission. I will definitely cherish the trust that the organization has given me, stimulate the great potential in my heart, and strive to show my best self on the field. ”

On January 19, 2020, Zhao Dan competed in the women's steel frame bobsleigh event of the 3rd Winter Youth Olympic Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland.

Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Zhang Chenlin

Born on December 14, 2002, Zhao Dan is currently the youngest athlete in the Chinese steel frame snow team. This season, she won the Intercontinental Cup in Innsbruck and successfully stood on the World Cup, successfully advancing to the second round and finishing fifteenth.

Although she is young, Zhao Dan's calmness and bravery on the field have been quite a general style, and 4 years ago, the girl who practiced long jump in the track and field team of Hohhot Experimental Middle School heard the coach tell her that she could join the national steel frame snowmobile training team through cross-border cross-discipline selection, and she still had some "ignorance".

Yang Hongjun, director of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Athletic Sports Training Center, remembers that in the summer of 2018, the coach of the national steel frame snowmobile training team valued Zhao Dan's physical fitness and hoped that when she participated in the training, Zhao Dan's parents were still hesitant. Because that year, Zhao Dan, who was less than 16 years old, had already won the long jump and triple jump championships at the All-District Games, and the talent she showed on the track and field field made parents and teachers have a lot of plans for her path to further education. "We can understand the hesitation of parents, after all, compared with athletics, the steel frame snowmobile project is still very niche, and it is still a relatively unpopular project in China." After all, many colleges and universities recruit athletics students, but the foreign teacher responsible for selecting athletes recognizes Zhao Dan's physical fitness and thinks that she is a rare good seedling suitable for practicing steel frame snowmobiles. We feel that this is a rare opportunity for Zhao Dan, so we communicate with parents and teachers, hoping to carefully consider her transfer and not miss the opportunity. Yang Hongjun said that after many communications with parents, teachers and Zhao Dan himself, they began to try to understand the steel frame snowmobile project, and finally Zhao Dan decided to go to the steel frame snowmobile training team to practice and try.

After joining the steel frame snowmobile training team, Zhao Dan overcame his psychological fear of the project with the help of the coaching team and quickly fell in love with this "brave sport". Thanks to the foundation laid by the previous long jump practice, Zhao Dan's performance in physical fitness and explosiveness after the transfer is quite outstanding, the speed of the cart has improved rapidly, and the gliding performance has also continued to improve under his hard work. More than a year later, Zhao Dan began to emerge in international competitions. In the 2019-2020 season, Zhao Dan represented the Chinese team in the Youth Olympic Games held in Switzerland for the first time and achieved the seventh place result, which was the first time that the Chinese women's steel frame snowmobile landed on the Winter Youth Olympic Games. In the 2021/2022 season, she won the Intercontinental Cup in Innsbruck. In the steel frame snowmobile domestic selection competition, Zhao Dan won the first place in four skids in both competitions, and finally entered the Beijing Winter Olympics with the first overall score, and has now been confirmed to participate in the women's single competition of the Beijing Winter Olympics.

From a long jumper to a steel frame snowmobile nova, Zhao Dan's fate with ice and snow sports began with the establishment and implementation of the "cross-border cross-item material selection mechanism". At the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games, there are many young people like Zhao Dan, because of cross-border cross-discipline selection, they have the opportunity to stand on the Winter Olympic games to chase their dreams. Looking back at the 2015 beijing and the world set the ice and snow covenant, nearly 1/3 of the winter Olympic projects have never been carried out in the mainland, the foundation is thin, the foundation is weak, the talent reserve is small has become the most important obstacle to the development of China's ice and snow projects, the proposal and implementation of the cross-border cross-item selection mechanism, opened up the Beijing Winter Olympics all projects to participate in the difficult blockage, especially the steel frame snowmobile and other projects that started late, cross-border cross-item selection has played a vital role in its development process. Breaking the inherent single project system and extensively carrying out cross-border cross-project selection, it has consolidated the thickness of China's ice and snow talents and built a broader stage for the "Zhao Dans".