The Winter Olympics and the Spring Festival are beautiful that meet once every four years, and as a winter sports athlete, it seems that competing in the Spring Festival has become a norm. Yang Yang, the first gold medalist of the Chinese Winter Olympics and has 59 world championship titles, spent most of the Spring Festival in foreign competitions during his 13-year national team career because he had to represent the national team for the country.
"Even when we are preparing for the game, we will feel very nervous, but because it is the New Year, we will make dumplings in the team and feel the taste of the New Year."
On February 1, on the first day of the Chinese New Year, the Beijing Winter Olympic Organizing Committee held a press conference on the theme of "Winter Olympics, Sports and Culture". Yang Yang, chairman of the Athletes' Committee of the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee, also talked about his own little story of the Winter Olympics.
From participating in the Winter Olympics for the first time in 1998, to now serving the athletes of the world participating in the Winter Olympics at his doorstep, in Yang Yang's memory, many interesting things also happened in some competitions during the New Year.
"I used to be with Apollo, a famous short track speed skater in the United States, and in a World Cup competition in the New Year, he came to eat dumplings with us and found that when we ate dumplings, we had to eat garlic and it was raw garlic, and then we started to compete to eat raw garlic, and he said that he had eaten all his life's raw garlic that day." Yang Yang smiled and said that after eating so much garlic, he didn't seem to have a stomach upset before the game.
In addition to having a lot of interesting little interactions with foreign athletes, Yang Yang also mentioned that every Winter Olympics will catch Valentine's Day, and there will be many small stories happening: "I have also received roses in the two Winter Olympic Games I participated in, which are very memorable Olympic experiences after the competition. I especially look forward to the good results during the Beijing Winter Olympics, and I also hope that athletes can have a particularly unforgettable experience. ”