Xu Mengtao: Beijing · The final chapter of the Brave Game

According to Gong Ke, a reporter from sports weekly newspaper, the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics are over, and for the veterans of the Chinese team, whether to participate in the Beijing Winter Olympics four years later is like a somewhat tangled choice. After all, playing at home to the Winter Olympics is always a unique experience that no one wants to miss; on the other hand, the impact of age and injury cannot be ignored, and the variables in four years are even more unpredictable.

As for whether to fight for another four years, Xu Mengtao, who returned from Pyeongchang, did hesitate. When she was in Pyeongchang, she did not even make it to the final round when she was in good shape, and Xu Mengtao doubted whether she would not be able to win the Olympic championship in her life. "Such a good state can't win the championship, and it is impossible to take it in the future!" In March 2018, Xu Mengtao lay down on the operating table again and completed the meniscus surgery for both legs. During this break away from the public eye and the arena, Xu Mengtao also made a sufficient ideological struggle between "going" and "staying". But in the end, the love of the aerial skill project and the "unwillingness" of the defeat in Pyeongchang still made Xu Mengtao decide to return to the team and start his fourth Winter Olympic cycle.

Less than 4 months after completing the operation, Xu Mengtao returned to Qinhuangdao to start the summer training before the new season with his teammates. In November 2018, the air skills team transferred from Qinhuangdao to Arshan for snow training, and Xu Mengtao successfully recovered the difficulty of two weeks after a month, and also prepared physically and mentally for the first World Cup season of the Beijing cycle. In fact, the memory of Pyeongchang is not far away, but that defeat brought a little change in mentality. "I fell ninth in the Olympics, what am I afraid of?" In Xu Mengtao's view, Pyeongchang's "real major failure" has made her more free.

During the Beijing cycle, the coaching team of the Air Skills National Training Team also welcomed a new member – Dimitri Kaunov, a well-known coach who once coached 2017 World Championship champion Ashley Caldwell. Previously, Xu Mengtao did not have much experience working with foreign teachers, and Kaunov's arrival brought more freshness to her daily training. Kaunov pays attention to details, whether it is the problem of technical movements or Xu Mengtao's emotional ups and downs, he can be keenly aware. In terms of training arrangements, Kaunov gave the experienced Xu Mengtao more freedom.

With a more relaxed mindset, Xu Mengtao steadily moved forward in the Beijing cycle. In the 2018/19 season, Xu Mengtao, who had just recovered two weeks of difficulty, won three championships in the World Cup and was crowned the overall champion of the season for the third consecutive year. At the World Championships at the end of the season, Xu Mengtao not only won another single bronze medal, but also led the team to win a silver medal in the mixed team competition. In the 2019/20 season, Xu Mengtao regained the difficulty of the three-week stage, although she failed to win the "crystal ball" again, but her success rate on the three-week platform also increased with the deepening of the season.

The global outbreak of the new crown epidemic in early 2020 temporarily slowed down Xu Mengtao's pace of progress. Throughout the 2020/21 season, the Aerial Skills National Training Team failed to compete abroad. In the past, Xu Mengtao called herself a "good racer", and every season when the International Snow Federation announced the schedule, she was excited to see the names of the countries and cities where the competition was about to be held, and she also looked forward to the exchange with the opponent. But this season, she can only train at home, but she still does not forget to pay attention to the dynamics of the World Cup, pay attention to the performance of her main opponent Laura Peel and her good friend Ashley Caldeville and other "acquaintances", and observe what is going on on the field.

When the calendar flipped to December 2021, just two months before the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Xu Mengtao returned to the international arena in Ruka, Finland. When she stood at the training ground wearing her iconic blue ski suit, many foreign players who had not seen her for a long time also greeted her: "Peach! In the six races before the Winter Olympics, Xu Mengtao won 2 gold, 1 silver and 1 bronze in a single event, breaking the record for the number of World Cup wins held by Australian star Cooper, and also won two mixed team championships with his teammates. In every game, she also tried her best to challenge herself to the three-week platform movement, because at the Beijing Winter Olympics, she still wanted to be the person who "fought" the gold medal with high difficulty, rather than reducing the difficulty in order to "protect" the gold medal. However, unlike the previous three Winter Olympic Games, although Xu Mengtao still wants to "fight", her obsession with the gold medal is a little less than before, and she wants to leave a milestone in the sport more than that gold medal. This four-year, Xu Mengtao's dream was in the Beijing Winter Olympics, but her dream was not limited to gold medals.

In an interview after the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, Xu Once described the Aerial Skills project as a "game of the brave." In her opinion, the person who can laugh to the end in this game must have both a strong heart and dreams and beliefs. When standing at the starting point of the Winter Olympics for the fourth time, Xu Mengtao still had dreams and firm beliefs, and her heart was stronger in the grinding of the four Olympic cycles. The closer it is to the Winter Olympics, the more calm and powerful Xu Mengtao's heart becomes. In the field of aerial skills, Xu Mengtao, who has her own record and has stood on the podium of the World Series many times, has become the person who changed the sport as Wilson predicted 12 years ago.

Even if Xu Mengtao's gold medal map is the only one in the Winter Olympics, who dares to say that she is not the winner of this "brave game"? A silver medal in the hybrid relay also proves the efforts of China's short track speed skating over the past 4 years. In the following competition, several main players, including Xu Mengtao, Jia Zongyang and Qi Guangpu, also launched an impact on individual projects and wrote a new story for the Chinese air skills team at the Beijing Winter Olympics.