Cui Xiaotong chatted about the topic of ice and snow with some eyebrows flying. Photo: Xinhua News Agency
In the women's quadruple sculls final at the Tokyo Olympics on July 28, 2021, China's Cui Xiaotong, Lü Yang, Zhang Ling and Chen Yunxia won the crown. Nowadays, the eyes of the Summer Olympic champions are all turned to the Beijing Winter Olympics, and Cui Xiaotong, who rides the wind and waves on the water, talks about the topic of ice and snow with some eyebrows and dances, after all, she is a Dandong girl who has been associated with ice and snow since childhood.
"I'm not professional in ice and snow sports." Cui Xiaotong first clarified the identity of "amateur", but the children in the northeast will have more or less experience of crawling on the ice in their childhood, and she is no exception. "The water surface of the big river loop and the small river ditch has a thick ice as soon as it enters the winter, and when we were young, we liked to go to the ice to play with the ice car, and I would also make an ice car." Children can make a simple version of the ice car with a wooden board and two iron pieces, which is not the same as the adults, but it is enough for everyone to play for half a day.
Dealing with ice was a happy childhood, and Cui Xiaotong's exposure to snow sports was in 2018, when the Chinese rowing team learned cross-country skiing in Salt Lake City, USA. She smiled and recalled when she and her teammates first joined the crash course: "Going up is a fall, and in the beginning, going uphill was the hardest for us." ”
From the perspective of laymen, rowing and cross-country skiing are sports that are not comparable, but insiders look at the doorway. Cui Xiaotong told the Beijing News reporter: "We are all aerobic projects, and the power parts of cross-country skiing and rowing are the same, all of which use legs and core power, and have the same high requirements for lung capacity, so later many cross-country skiers have transferred from rowing to racing." ”
During the Beijing Winter Olympics, Cui Xiaotong preferred short track speed skating and speed skating, which were also racing events. In addition to the famous Wu Dajing, another Chinese athlete that the rowing Olympic champion followed was Ning Zhongyan, who laughed and said: "We are graduate students, and I have asked him for homework." I wish him a good level of performance and good results in the Winter Olympics. ”
China's ice and snow sports have always shown a situation of "ice strong and snow weak", but with the addition of "genius girl" Gu Ailing, veteran Xu Mengtao, Cai Xuetong and others, this situation is expected to be reversed in this Winter Olympics.
At the Tokyo Olympics, the Chinese rowing team broke the monopoly of European and American athletes on the podium in one fell swoop, and Cui Xiaotong also shared his personal experience with Chinese snow athletes, "We can't think that we are born inferior to European and American athletes, first of all, we must have confidence, learn from daily training, and find the most suitable training method for our Chinese athletes." The Olympic games are also the struggle of willpower, the sword blade comes out of the grinding, the plum blossom fragrance comes from the bitter cold, everyone has made so much effort, it is even more brave to bloom and show the best of themselves. ”
Beijing News reporter Zhou Xiao
Edited by Han Shuangming Proofreader Wang Xin